After almost a week of medical school, two if you count orientation, I have come to the conclusion that medical school is like kindergarten. Shots are required before class, lunch is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with chips and some fruit, afternoon naps are appreciated and enjoyed, colored pencils, pens, or crayons are required for class, and we get to get naked and draw on each other.

Okay, a little explanation on the last one. I don't think kindergarten are running around naked, but they often show their bellies, right? And tell me that 5 year olds don't come home with markers all over them sometimes. At UNMC, part of the anatomy core is a section called living anatomy. We learn to find landmarks on each other and how to do various aspects of the physical exams. I was told at my interview that this class is kind of like, "Welcome to living anatomy, please take off your shirt." Turns out that that statement is 100% accurate. Our first session was today and we were working on the back/spine region. We did range of motion and the way to check for the amount of flexion in the lumbar region is to see how much elongation takes place when one bends over. The way to do this is to draw lines at designated places 10cm apart and have the person bend over. Once this has occurs, the distance between the lines is again measured. There is a 40-50% increase in length, or the distance is now 14-15cm. This class was funny. It is interesting to watch people and how they reacted to the walking around without a shirt on. The girls had warning and were told to wear sports bras. The sessions are an hour long and we are given a demonstration (using classmates) before each set of things to do. What I found interesting was to look who put their shirt back on for the second demonstration, both male and female. I think that one has to be secure in themselves to sit there shirtless in that situation. Some did, and some covered up quickly.

A note on Sophie, my cat. For those of you who don't know, she has been having trouble walking since may and she was taken to the animal neurologist a little while ago to try and figure out what was wrong with her and heal her. She had abnormal results in test after test, but the true cause was unknown. Today we found out that she has... I don't remember what it's called... mom, will you fill us in? What this means is that her vaccination to Rabies caused this to happen. In other words, she had an autoimmune reaction to the vaccine. The neurologist has seen in in two other cats, both of whom recovered fully without drugs. She is getting better by the day and will be back to normal in no time. She can never have another vaccine, which is okay with me since she lives inside.

3:00, time for lunch and then guess what I'm going to do....