Yes, I am still alive...

I am sorry that I haven't posted anything for a while yet, I have been so busy! I wrote four exams in seven days. Without going into too much detail, all I will really say is that it sucked. I am still totally sleep deprived and I still have to survive six more weeks before I get March Break. Oh the thought of going home gives me something to look forward to, which is great since the only thing I get to look forward to here is when the next test is. Oh the joys of medical school.

Today in our physical diagnosis lab I learned how to look into people's ears, mouths, and noses. Yeah, we stuck speculums up our partner's noses and forced a light with a pointed tip up to see if we could see the turbinates of the nose. I was alright at the nose one (mind you, my partner kept breathing through his nose and fogging up my view thru the scope I was looking through), but looking into the ear was difficult. I felt like I had two left hands!! You have to hold the otoscope with one hand, stabilize the fingers against the head so that you have more control, put the scope into the ear all with one hand and then use the other hand to pull the ear up and back so that you open the ear canal so that you can see something. To add onto the level of manual dexterity required we have to hold an insufflation bulb (a pump that gives a 'puff' of air into the ear to see the tympanic membrane move) with the same hand that is holding the otoscope and stabilizing the ear. Tough stuff for somebody with freakishly small hands! But with the help of the TA and the family doc in the lab, I (kind of) got the hang of it. Now I'll have to practice looking into people's ears, mouths, and noses to become a pro at these skills that so many doctors don't even think twice about doing.

All I can say is that my respect for doctors grow each day! hahaha

This is an otoscope:



This is what you see when you look inside the ear with the otoscope: