Ummm... Really?

One of the classes I teach has a human cadaver component. Now the students didn't get to do the dissection (personally this is the best part) but they did get extensive cadaveric viewing.

So I ask this, with a true amount of love and respect for my students:

How do you mistake a cervix for a prostate?!

I mean she still had her uterus and even if you were confused by that, she is missing a penile tissue and testicles!

Oiy...

I still do love my students! :) They did surprisingly well (minus that snafu)

I finally understand...

why professors give multiple choice tests. Even if grading them by hand (and not by nice machines) its so much easier than essay questions! That will teach me to ever ask for essay questions again despite my liberal arts science educations (and no, thats not an oxymoron).

In other news, my PI was in late last night and ended up getting caught up talking to another professor I had known previously when I happened to be exiting the building (he had left like half an hour earlier so clearly this was quiet the conversation). I of course stopped to say hi to the second since my PI was there (I do enjoy them both as people so it was not weird at all), when my PI goes and says "EMT GFP may have just gotten my $2 million in grant money because of this one key figure and has two publications from my lab, I really don't understand why EMT GFP isn't in med school yet."

It really did make me feel good, I needed a pick me up like that, though I have to say I am the worse person in the world about taking complements but it was nice to know that I have people batting for me in terms of medical school.

Devotion

The dispatch was for a sick person, but the issue was not a sick person at all. An elderly man, mid-eighties, had called because his wife's feeding tube had come out. I know, not an emergency in the classic sense, but this was a feeding tube that went through her side, not her nose. Stomach acid is not a pleasant thing to having leaking in all the wrong places.

She was mostly paralyzed from a previous stroke and her husband refused to put her in a nursing home again. He said he had done it once but the look in his eyes spoke volumes about the care, or perhaps the lack their of, she had received. He could take care of her daily needs, but this he could not no matter how much he tried.

So we bundled her up and moved her carefully to the cot, with her husband answering all my questions along the way. You could see his devotion to her as he sat in the back with me and his wife, holding her hand for the ride. She couldn't respond much but you could see there was still life in her eyes, still understanding trapped in a body that now refused to move.

I wish it was easier for sir, to take care of your wife, to not worry about her, but let me tell you that you are doing a wonderful job for her. She could not have a better care taker than you.

Finals: Its busy on the professors too!

Needless to say, its been a busy post Thanksgiving.

Several nights at the firehouse were we ran call all night (and then I went a taught the next morning. Thank you firehouse pitch black coffee!)

On top of that, I have had several experiments in lab that have lead to late nights frantically analyzing results, making figures, and proofing papers before deadlines.

Lets not even go into my frustrations with my bacteria at the moment. Needless to say, E. coli should not be this hard to grow. Its E. coli for crying out loud! It should be hard to kill these buggers! At least now they are growing on plates, now to just get them going in culture.

And last but not least, my poor students. I love them dearly but I sometimes pity them when this is just half of the review that I gave:

Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what the second pictures is explaining!