Island Med Student

We had a lecture today on collagen and bone. I learned that if you inject a bunny with something called papain, it breaks down the collagen which holds up their ears and it causes their ears to droop down. This is both sad and fascinating. I happen to really love bunnies, especially like the fluffy one in this pic. If you read this Wally, please know that the fluffy bunnies are only getting fluffier. Power to the bunnies.

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I just got back from the beach a few hours ago, where I was working on my tan. It got up to around 85 degrees today. It actually seems like it’s been getting hotter here lately. In reality, I think it’s been exactly the same temperature since I arrived here in August. My guess is that it just seems like it’s been getting hotter, because my body thinks it should be getting colder, and the contrast between what my body thinks it should be and what it actually is makes it seem like it’s insanely hot. I’m definitely not complaining. I’ve always loved the heat. Though, I do kind of miss the change of seasons. Mostly, I think I just miss my scarves. I didn’t pack any of them with me, because I knew it would never get cold enough here to wear them. I also do miss jumping in the leaves. There’s nothing like diving into a huge pile of wet leaves, getting all dirty and sticky, and breathing in the cool smell of change.

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Check out my latest post on Medscape about the oddities involved in going to medical school on an isolated island.

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In gross anatomy lab today, my group dissected the popliteal fossa (back of the knee). I noticed that the other group had done a crappy job of their dissection of the anterior and posterior thigh and gluteal region. Also, they hadn’t cut off the legs, even though the other tables had. So, I decided to come in this weekend and finish the dissection, and cut off the legs. But, I realized that I would need a hack saw, and they are kept in a locked room. So, I asked one of the prossectors if he could somehow let me into the room to get the hack saw for the weekend. He told me that we were supposed to leave the legs on our cadaver. I told him that I was planning on cutting them off this weekend. He replied, “well, that’s why we keep the hack saws in a locked room - so people like you won’t go around cutting off limbs.” I just smiled.

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Today was wonderfully relaxing. Micah and I swam at the beach, hung out with the Ren brothers for a while, and I played with the baby goats again. Also, I forgot to mention the “crab incident” on Friday. I stepped out onto our balcony, and there was a pretty good sized crab staring me down, just a few feet away. I wasn’t paying attention for a few minutes, and then suddenly I realized that the crab had gone into our apartment and was approaching Micah as he lay on the bed. I screamed out to Micah, and he was terrified. After chasing the crab around our apartment with a broom for a while, we finally got the sucker out.

Here is a pic of the crab, and some pics that Rennady and I took today.

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One of the goats that lives across from the Ren brothers had babies the other day. Yesterday, I got to play with two of them! Thanks Micah for taking the pics!

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I wrote a blog entry about my feelings that medicine is indeed an art on Medscape.

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Yesterday was an interesting day. To make a long and torturous story short, my laptop’s harddrive is fried. What does this mean for Kendra? It means that I lost a week’s worth of data (including my ever-so-precious lecture notes), which could have been even worse if it weren’t for Micah’s insistance that I backup my files. Secondly, I no longer have a laptop. It’s toast. Why does this suck so bad? Well, my laptop is my life. I use it to watch lectures, take lecture notes, write blogs, surf the internet for medical info, etc, etc. It was an integral part of my life, and my connection to the “real” world. And now it’s gone. I also came face to face yesterday with the one of the cruel realities of living in a third world country: there’s nothing anyone can do here to help. My only option is to mail my toasted harddrive to someone in the states and hope that I can get it fixed and returned back to me in a month or so. In the meantime, the digital umbilical cord has been cut, and I’m on my own.

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Ever see that movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray, where he woke up every day and he’s forced to re-live the same day, over and over again? Well, sometimes I feel like that’s my life. Since I’m used to living in the D.C. area, where I saw different people every day and ate at different restaurants and did different things, my life here has become strangely routine. I’m not really complaining, because I love it here. But I get up every day, walk the same path, see the same people, study in the same library, eat the same food, and even see the same cows and goats and dogs. Different things do happen during the day, but the campus is kind of an eerie place sometimes because we all spend our days in a monotonous microcosm. I do love my dogs, though. I don’t think they have any owners and they follow me home from school every day and I feed them whatever I have. There is definitely some comfort in that, and they always make me smile.

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Please read my latest post on Medscape about the teaching of basic sciences in medical school and passing tests.

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