January 21, 2001
Hello All,
I am a little later getting this report out since I had a very busy Sunday. I decided that I was behind enough in Physiology that I should buckle down and study. Plus, it was easy to study Phys. since we are studying the heart right now. I have a fairly good background in cardiac physiology since I went through nursing and took Advanced Cardiac Life Support. It kind of helps to put everything together and keep a clinical focus. This would be pretty heady stuff without some background.
I am afraid that my pediatric experience is more compelete than I would have hoped. I came down with a head cold which I am sure I picked up from one of the coughing, sneezing, spewing, or spitting patients we had last week. We were focusing on chest exams and I particularly appreciated it when my preceptor told one young man to breath in my direction when we were listening to lung sounds. His lungs were clear, but his nose was not.
I am enjoying Physiology. Biochemistry is an interesting review of classes I have already had, perhaps a bit more in depth. Neuroanatomy is going to be my downfall this semester. I had to take notes on one lecture this past week and I almost fell asleep at the computer. We are just going through the brain naming seemingly random structures like the crus cerebri, red nucleus, anterior commissure, etc. I would much rather learn pathways and functions while we learned these structures. I think it would be more beneficial to get the overall view all along which I am told we will have at the end of the course.
Well, that is probably more than you ever wanted to know about classes in the second semester at UT. If you would like though, I could wax elequent on the tribulations of neuroanatomy. Just let me know. We had a class meeting to discuss what we liked/disliked about last semester and it just turned into a whining session about neuroanatomy this semester. I bet if we put as much effort into learning the information as we have into complaining about it there wouldn't be much left to complain about.
Take care, Brenton
