Suturing!

As part of the Surgery Interest Group e-board, I'm unofficially taking the surgery elective this semester. We've just had two sessions so far: basic knot tying and basic suturing. This is my first real suturing experience. Not too shabby, eh? It's very similar to embroidery, just, you know, with pig skin instead of fabric.

Exciting News!

I just found out my stained glass mosaic "All Heart" is going to be published on the cover of the Medical Student Research Journal!!!!!!

This is one of my unfinished pictures, and of course the published photo will be sans laundry on the floor, but this gives a pretty decent overview of the art.

Basically, this piece represents the heart of the physician: we take all of our experiences, good and bad, and use those to connect to our patients.

Study Buddies

File this under the random fun things at CHM.

Our histology lab is all computer based - rather than staining cells ourselves or looking at tissue samples under a microscope, we have pre-selected images on a computer program that we use to learn the difference between Kupffer cells and Ito cells, for example.

Because the things we are identifying can be quite tiny, and because CHM doesn't want fingerprints all over the computer screen, we use these little pointers.

We also have stuffed turtles, so if anyone has a question, they can simply place the turtle on top of the computer and continue on with the lab, rather than waiting forever with a hand up for a professor to come over and help.

This inevitably leads to my lab partner and I posing the turtles in various positions throughout lab.