First Week and a Half

Is it bad that the first week and a half of medical school has felt like a month?

We start our first year with an 11-week block called Clinically Oriented Anatomy. This means that I am spending every waking minute studying anatomy! Well, almost every minute.

We go to the gross anatomy lab 4 days a week to do a dissection on our cadaver. I share a cadaver with 4 other "tank-mates" (Kristen thinks that this word is pretty funny. The cadavers are stored in a metal tank with formaldehyde and water so our assigned tank contains our cadaver. When it is closed, it looks like this
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/uploadedImages/News/Chicago/Images/Urban/anatomylab2.jpg
Don't worry, no dead bodies are visible!) The dissection part has been really interesting, but our professors also expect us to know a TON of stuff! We also have some lectures, mostly on embryology or microscopic stuff that we can't see on our cadaver. Even though we're basically only taking one class, I can guarantee that I am studying way more than I have ever studied.

We do have another class called Early Clinical Experience 1 where we learn basic doctoring skills like how to take a history and later on how to perform a physical exam. The time commitment for that class is much lower since that class is spread out over the whole year.

In the meantime, Kristen gets to take an even larger role in taking care of Ethan. He has been a lot more curious lately. He tracks things with his eyes, he gets scared by loud or unfamiliar noises (like the organ at church!), he likes staring at his hands while he moves them, and he has actually started to play a little bit with the rattles on his bouncer. He also loves to suck on his hand, especially his thumb.