Midsaggital, anterolateral, bombastic

My day has been filled with anatomy, which means that it's been filled with unnecessarily big words for simple things. It also means that I spent 3.5 hours pulling fat off a rather large African-American male cadaver in order to expose the proper upper thoraic muslces of the anterior and posterior (chest and shoulder area). I did this with absolutely zero guidance from professors or TAs, which was very discouraging and confusing. We didn't even learn how to properly attach a blade to the end of a scalpel, and I nearly cut myself during my attempt (at least one kid did cut himself). We didn't learn how to properly turn a 200-pound embalmed cadaver from back to front, which is damn heavy (and rigid). We didn't learn how to properly expose the muscles, so we hacked away for awhile and did what we thought was a good job. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't -- there was no professor to inform us either way. Despite my negative first day experience, there were a few positives: I was not freaked out by the cadaver (it seemed like a mannequin -- the skin felt like hard plastic); I did not faint (at least one person did); my group removed skin all the way down the arm to the elbow (on both sides) so we are ready to begin finding muscles during the next lab; I was excited by the anatomy (always a good sign for an aspiring doctor).

In other news, I made enchiladas for dinner using the Old El Paso recipe that Gareth taught me last summer. They tasted sooooooooo good! I ate 4 out of the 8 enchiladas. It totally reminded me of last summer. I definitely miss those days, but look how far we've both come in just 1 year: I'm in med school dissecting cadavers and Gareth is finishing up a summer internship in Finland.

Jordana returns to Houston tomorrow and I am thrilled! We've learned to spend a lot of time apart, but it never gets any easier. Reunions are always fantastic when that feeling of sheer happiness envelops you and instantly turns an average day into a special one.

T minus 1 day until the weekend... I feel like this week has been more like a semester.

Music of the Moment: "These Exiled Years" by Flogging Molly