jenniferhawke.com

dearest Nevis,

as i sit here* typing this, the corner of the house feels like it’s moving out from under me. i ran outside to stand on the porch and it’s shaking there too. back inside, i’m staring at the blinds to make sure they’re actually moving and i’m not just deliriously tired or something. sure enough. doors are now swinging on their hinges…

and just like that, the little excitement we get around here has passed. i’m thankful it wasn’t your volcano deciding to act up. i can handle a little house rocking and rolling once in while as long as molten hot lava isn’t involved. then again, i guess i’m sort of first in line for the airport.

what a month! what a great fantastic month! there was one week i ended up with three flat tires in a row and Reggie at the bike shop would just shake his head and laugh when he saw me hobbling along. then my super awesome boyfriend sent a real pump in the mail and i’m all set to patch/pump my own tubes. nothing against your roads, of course. because i realize they could be much MUCH worse. i’m impressed at how smooth and black and tar-smelly the new road east of campus is. looks goood!

so the cycling has been good and the days have been getting shorter, which makes my early morning ride much cooler. i have been leaving at the quite literal version of “dawn” – bright enough that i don’t need a headlight, but dark enough that all my snazzy reflectors and blinking red LED lights make a difference.

and the weather! so nice! knocking the A/C down (up?) by a degree every few days because 24oC indoors actually feels *cold* in the mornings and evenings. i’m sure it will be completely off before summer comes around again. outside the humidity has all but disappeared and it’s possible to walk or cycle without being drenched in sweat within 5 minutes. i know part of the change is my acclimatization, but i don’t want to think about how FREEZING i will be in Vancouver this April. i just want to look at the blue sky and enjoy the warm afternoon raindrops.

other than enjoying my cycle to school and the balmy weather, not much has happened this month. i said good-bye to the foster pups early on and have been missing them every since. another couple of blocks have gone by and finals are not around the corner: they are right on our doorstep. Jonathan will be here in 17 days and i’m looking forward to spending a little quality time with my favourite island again.

yes, i’m talking to you! in these few short months, i have become your biggest fan. i would recommend you as a holiday spot to just about anyone. except maybe people i don’t like because i don’t really want to share you if i don’t have to. i am happy here. i am extremely happy at MUA. and the next 17 months are going to be great.

BFF,
`Jennifer xo

PS: i’m not sure if this is what they call “island fever” but is it a bad thing if you look out the window because you think you hear your name and realize it’s a goat bleating as he wanders by? and what if that happens more than once?

… what about more than once a week?

————
*note: most of this post was written yesterday afternoon.

“People are surprised at how down-to-earth I am. I like to stay home on Friday nights and listen to ‘The Art of Happiness’ by the Dalai Lama.”

~ Carmen Electra

histo
- pinna
- external auditory meatus
- cerumen
- outer ear hearing disorders
- otoscopy
- tympanic membrane
- auditory tube
- ear ossicles
- inner ear vestibule
- bony & membranous labyrinth
- crist ampullaris
- macula
- cochlea
- vertigo & motion sickness
- organ of corti
- sound discrimination

evidence-based medicine
- research biases
- potential biases
- some biases that sound just like other biases
- more biaseseses
- last class of the term! final on Monday!

anatomy
- review of back
- review of (some of the) thorax
- in less than 2 hours, we FLEW through material that took us days and days to cover earlier in the term. so i’ll spare you that.

the only thing left is just review in pretty much all of the classes. i think it’s the 25 chapters in histo that are freaking me out the most right now. next week will be fun.

PS: please have a giggle at today’s quote and do not think i have her photo as my motivational desktop image or anything. if you do, i ask you to slowly click on the “home” link in your browser and never ever visit this website again. ; )

this is only the second earthquake i have actually felt (experienced, rode, survived — whatever you call it). the first was in Japan over 10 years ago. i have to say it was a bit anti-climatic on this part of the island. i thought i was just experiencing indigestion from the cafeteria lunch.

An earthquake, measured at 7.3 on the Richter scale, rocked St. Kitts and Nevis and the rest of the Eastern Caribbean, and as far south as Trinidad and Tobago, at 3 p.m. on today (Thursday), November 29th.

According to www.earthquake.usgs.gov the epicentre of the earthquake was given as latitude 14.921 degrees N and 61.264 degrees W, which is 40km or 25 miles north of Fort de France, Martinique. The depth of the quake was given as 145.4 kilometres below the earth’s surface.

~ from SKN Vibes

yesterday: i learned that i can have a cup of green tea at 4pm and the caffeine doesn’t prevent me from falling into bed exhausted at 10pm. this is exciting news.

but has nothing to do with this post which was meant to be about last night’s power outage. whoops.

in the wee hours of the night: i woke to the bleeping complaint of the uninterruped power supply letting me know that the electricity had been interrupted. i laid in bed listening to the a/c cut out and watched the ceiling fan slowly lose momentum.

this morning: still no power when i woke up at 330am, but i got out of bed and strapped on the headlamp to study anyway. still nothing by the time i left the house at 6am. i showered with a flashlight in the bathroom and was thankful i could heat up water for tea because my stove is propane.

on the way to school: just up the road, i had to detour around a power pole at a 45o angle over the road. there was a small red car with a large red dent parked nearby. explanation served.

on the way home from school: power pole fixed and electricity back on.

happy ending.

for everyone but the little red car.

“This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”

~ Douglas Adams

histo
- psoriasis
- UV rays and skin layers
- mole vs. melanoma
- dermis layers, ridges, papilla
- hypodermis
- hair root, follicle, growth, baldness
- arrector pili
- sebaceous glands
- sweat glands
- nail
- Merkels’ disc
- Meissner’s corpuscle
- Pacinian corpuscle
- Ruffini’s corpuscle
- Krause’s end bulb
- muscle spindle
- Golgi tendon organ

embryo
- pons
- medulla oblongata
- ancencephaly
- Arnold-Chiari malformation
- Dandy Walker syndrome
- hydrocephalus
- poren/schizen/hydran/holoprosen/lissencephaly
- craniopharyngioma

anatomy
- larynx
- thinking about how to get into town to pay my phone bill
- more swallowing stuff
- that is all i remember

just spent two hours getting to town and back. first time being in town during regular business hours EVER. it was weird! got some (postcard!) stamps (finally!) from the post office. small highlight of a totally awesome day. : )

“God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.”

~ Sir William Bragg

histo [8-930am]
- post-exam consolation
- semi-heated (tense!) discussion about format of final theory/lab exam
- stratum corneum, granulosum, lucidum, spinosum, basale
- melanocytes, Merkel, Langerhans
- keratohyalin granules
- Olland bodies
- Jane Goodall (wrinkles are beautiful)
- albinism
- Vitiligo

embryo [10-11am]
- neurulation
- neuroectoderm
- spinal cord development
- myelination
- prosencephalon
- diencephalon
- pituitary gland
- mesencephalon
- rhombencephalon

anatomy [11-1pm]
- discussion of format of final and shelf exam
- bones and cartilage of nose
- deviated nasal septum
- paranasal sinuses
- epistaxis: Kiesselbach’s area and sphenopalatine artery
- choanae
- lymphatic drainage of the tongue and oral cavity
- naso/oral/laryngopharynx
- auditory tube
- Waldeyer’s ring: tonsils & adenoids
- pharyngeal muscles
- sleep apnea
- introduction to swallowing
- out early around 1215pm

anatomy lab [130-3pm]
- lab is done for the term. now we are just cleaning up our mess and preparing for final group presentations next week.

[block 1 re-cap] [block 2 re-cap] [block 3 re-cap]

last block before finals! done! there is a little bit of new material in Block 5, but not much. now we review, review, review (our boats gently down the stream) to remember all of the things we forgot.

but first! what happened over the last 3 weeks… ??

gross anatomy
- cranial nerves (“oh, oh, oh, to touch… “)
- the orbit (yes, we poked around in eyeball sockets for real!)
- shoulder to scalp (and every muscle, nerve, vessel, gland in between)

>> most interesting thing learned: i have enjoyed working with the cadavers all term but this was a really neat block for me in the lab. like, more than the others for some reason. i would use up all my fingers and toes if i counted the number of times i squealed “that is SOO COOL!” at things like the ansa cervicalis, trochlear nerve entering the superior oblique muscle of the eye, spinal root of the accessory nerve traveling up through the foramen magnum, and the inferior alveolar nerve and artery entering the mandibular canal in the jaw. tiny little details that just matter so much.

histology
- male & female reproductive system (meiosis is arrested when and for how long?)
- endocrine glands (“master control”)
- urinary system (glomeruluseses and mesangium and hydrostatic pressure)

>> most interesting thing learned: i think the most interesting thing i learned in histo this block is that we’re barely shaving the tip of the iceberg into our snowcone. starting to figure out hormonal pathways has been super cool, but it’s obvious there is a LOT more to the story. i’m looking forward to the next semesters when we get to add drugs and disease into the mix!

embryology
- head and neck development (maxillary prominences and cleft lips/palates)
- teratogenic agents and periods of susceptibility (infections, environment, etc)
- respiratory system development (surfactant and premature babies)
- pharyngeal arches and pouches and clefts, ohmy! (ears, tonsils, thymus)

>> most interesting thing learned: well, we’ve gotten to the point where the fetus has suddenly gone from a lump of cells to something with eyes and a nose! it’s funny how the closer it looks to you and i (and less like something from the Space channel), the more it seems to be a real person. i don’t want to get into any sort of discussion about abortion, but this class has certainly given me a new (more informed) perspective. that, and i think i have a crush on Virginia Apgar.

evidence-based medicine
- how to find a primary scientific source from a secondary scientific news article
- how primary and secondary scientific sources don’t always “match up”
- potential sources of bias in research

>> most interesting thing learned: tracing back a website “news” article to its’ legitimate research paper counterpart was an interesting experiment. for one, (as i figured) a LOT of online news articles don’t even have a legitimate research paper counterpart. and if they do, the research itself is often so full of bias i’m amazed they wrote it up in the news at all. i already try to keep up with a few scientific journals, but this was good encouragement to check out news websites more often. after all, what are the majority of your patients going to be reading?

tomorrow we dive head first into Block 5 and then finals. i think i’m going to try a new approach for you Armchair Medical Students during these last couple of weeks. instead of one big, vague re-cap, i’m going to share daily vague re-caps. not a full-out schedule, but a general idea of how much material we cover in our 5 hours of lecture and 2.5 hours of lab each day.

i received an email from my dad this afternoon. it was a photo of him bundled up to his chin in a winter jacket and a huge furry hat with big ear flaps. there’s nothing quite like November in Saskatchewan.

this time last year, Prince George, British Columbia was enjoying -36 degree C weather with a nasty windchill…

[November 28th, 2006]

and some of us were happy to be up to our eyeballs in snow…

study breaks have to happen some time. and when they do… beaches are better.

“if there is one giant take-home lesson i’m learning from med school, it has absolutely nothing to do with cranial nerve mnemonics. prioritization takes a lot of practice and since i’m in this learning lifestyle for the long-haul, i figured i would be best figuring out how to fit Real Life in early on.”
~ me (in an email to a good friend today)

the biggest lesson i have learned this semester has to do with prioritization. personal life triage. how to determine where my important time goes, in what doses, and how to say “no”.

even more notably, than learning how to say “no” is learning how to say “yes” more often than i thought possible. we obviously can’t expect to do everything and know everything. but i think it’s incredibly important to save time for a hobby or two and to get (or remain) involved in your community. it might seem overwhelming at first, but prioritization takes practice. you’ll get better at it with time. learn when to say “no” and how to be efficient with your time so you can say “yes” more often.

i like to say “yes” to the beach when i can. even if only for a few minutes here and there.

this morning i sat on the porch and waited for enough light to ride my bicycle to school. it was 6am and i wanted to get to the anatomy lab early to review things like trochlear nerves and maxillary arteries and levator palpebrae superiorii and omohyoids and mylohyoids and thyrocervical trunks and foramen rotundums.

but for those few minutes on the porch, time stood still. the moon was spectacular. a cool breeze brought the hair on my arms to attention and kept the mosquitos at bay.

there are small moments in my life i will never forget and can never hope to put into words. sometimes i try to take a picture in an attempt to trigger the same sense of emotion when i look back at a later date. this is one of those photos.

today has been a spectacular day.