I'm baaaaaack!

[faithellen]

Thursday, Dana and I set out for Nawhfuhk VA for the 2005 Virginia EMS Symposium. We had a great time -- I got to meet many of his instructors/friends from his paramedic class, see people I've met since starting this thing back in January, do a little networking in anticipation of some stuff we'd like to undertake at the squad, and take a few classes in the balance.

Oh, and eat a lot. :) Thursday, we had a lovely dinner, just the two of us, at Shula's...first time in a long while we've been able to relax and eat and eat and eat and enjoy each other's company. Burgers Friday lunch, Johnny Rocket's Friday dinner, Nacho Mama's Saturday lunch, banquet (with Willard Scott speaking) Saturday night, and then Cracker Barrel for breakfast on the way home.

I took classes in HIPAA, Geriatric Trauma, Trauma From the Field to the ED, Domestic Violence, and a cadaver lab. (I blew off Crush Injuries and How To Tell One Psych Patient From Another.) I got little bits of useful information from most classes, but overall they were pretty boring (lots of micronapping).

The cadaver lab was pretty rough -- I pictured an operating arena with a corpse that they'd be autopsying and talking us through. Instead, there were a ROOM full of them in body bags, about 5 of them exposed in varying stages of, um, exposure, and then individual body part stations around the room where they showed us different organs and pathologies. We were invited to touch anything we wanted at any of the stations, and while it was an opportunity I'll likely not get again, I decided to pass. (I have restless hands, and I didn't feel like being EXTRA VIGILANT about NOT TOUCHING my face/shirt/pants/hair/FACE. As it was, I was extra vigilant *anyway*.) But I have a much better sense of What Is Where, especially in the abdomen.

Did you know that livers are REALLY REALLY large? Like, the size of your head?

At Saturday's banquet, I met a woman named Carolyn who is a classically-trained singer, lives in Richmond, and has promised to give me the hookup to the music scene in the city. I may soon have a place to sing!

So...that's where I've been and what's been going on. Anyone want to fling the icon-making link for these little anime-looking ones many of you are sporting?

Oh -- and Hagen was supposed to be home today (after 3 weeks of obedience training/boarding during symposium), but the breeder had to run out of town on an emergency, so that's been put off until Wednesday. I WANT MY PUPPY BACK!!

Comments

[bittibuddha.livejournal.com]

Welcome back, we missed you! :)

Corpse lab, huh? That's kind of fascinating, actually. Were any of them organ-donors? I've always wondered if there is some sort of educational value left in a body once its been harvested for donatable bits. (its what I would like to do when its my time.)

oh, and since you asked, here is the link for the avatar maker-thingie. It may be running slow with the traffic load: http://www.tektek.org/dream/dream.php#

[faithellen]

I'm not sure if they were organ donors -- I suspect not. I used to think that donating your body to medical science involved a certain amount of hubris (just what is so special about what's wrong with YOU?)...it had never occurred to me that *any* body is a great teaching tool.

And while it's not my thing at all, I certainly want all my future doctors to know how it all works in there. :)

From the case files of Dr. Skivee, Md.

[skivee.livejournal.com]

Years ago, I was an actor at an advanced medical training course at Georgetown.
One of the course participants was disecting a cadaver and spent a fair amout of time looking for the old woman's uterus. Eventually he found the hysterectomy scars.
You passed on crush injuries? Crush injuries are the best.
I had a crush injury from Emily Pingleman in third grade.

Organ versus Body donation

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

Donating your body is a much bigger process than organ donation -- Cadavers used for medical research or education go through almost a year of various chemical processes before arriving in a cadaver lab. Also, you can be a registered organ donor and not be able to donate your body -- we ran into that with my mom. She'd wanted her body to be donated to MS or Behcet's research, and I bet they'd have learned a TON from her, but they couldn't take her because she wasn't specifically registered as a body donor through them. It's asinine, but there it is.

Also, AFAIK, once you've donated organs, unless you have a disease of some sort that would make your body useful to specific research, med school labs can't take you because they need each cadaver to have teaching points for all internal structures, wherever possible. (although they've got women who had mastectomies/hysterectomies, and men who've had bits removed, etc -- it serves as a teaching tool for whatever disease process caused it, and as a diagnostic -- what's missing in this picture, that sort of thing.)

Check with the institution that interests you most, and ask them their guidelines. Cadavers are seriously expensive business, so if you offer to send along a grant with your deceased person that would help cover the cost of the process, they'd probably kiss your feet. (or...so to speak. LOL)

Woo Symposium!

[ladylyonesse.livejournal.com]

I took the cadaver lab at Symposium a couple of years ago -- for someone who has some SERIOUS panic-attack-death-issues, it was...an experience. I was fine until they uncovered the faces. Then I about lost it. But yes, it made a huge difference in terms of how I viewed the internal workings of an externally-effed-up patient.

And the organ stations have made me forever paranoid about the fact that, when lying down, I have a pulse in my abdomen. (It's been checked, so far no aneurysm) And if they made the lung station a requirement for all kids at experimentation ages, there would be NO MORE teen smoking! Here's how it went when I was there:

MedStudent: Here, have a lung!
Me: ...
MedStudent: That's a healthy lung. Squeeze it gently, feel how it's spongy?
Me: ~hurk~ Yes! Very nice. ~hands back like hot potato~
MedStudent: Here's a smoker's lung.
Me: ~ew~
MedStudent: Feel the difference?
Me: ~squish~ ... Hey, no spongy rebound! That's SO bizzare! Give me the other one back again? Oh...wait... (whereupon I realize I have a lung in each hand)
~hurk~

~giggle~