When in doubt, it's diarrhea.

Subject line?  That's in reference to the number of times I have read, heard, written, or thought about diarrhea over the past few days in preparation for our bacteriology quiz today.  It covered E. coli, Salmonella, and a few other random genera of bacteria.  And pretty much all of them cause some sort of diarrheal process.  Fun!

Even though it was just a few days ago that we took our anatomy and physiology exams, it feels like weeks have already gone by.  And our next round is starting up very soon.  The first histology exam is this coming Monday, and our first anatomy quiz is on Thursday.  I'm not too worried about histology - everything is pretty straightforward as long as your understand the function and structures of the different tissues and how they will look when stained.  It'll be a long test, but hopefully it'll go well. 

Anatomy is definitely switching gears.  We were just settling into our pattern of memorizing muscles, attachments, innervations, etc. and now we're working on the thoracic and abdominal cavities.  We started with the axial muscles attached to the spine, neck, and ribs and took a look at some of the blood vessels and nerves associated with those areas.  Today we actually cracked into the thoracic cavity of our group's cat to start with the components of that cavity - the heart, lungs, vessels, etc.  It's a very different type of information to learn and absorb, and I think it will require some rethinking of how to get it all in my head.  Not to mention that this next exam isn't for practically a month and will cover the spinal muscles, vertebrae, thoracic, abdominal, and pelvic cavities and all of the associated blood supply and innervation.  Woof.

And have I mentioned lately how awful dissecting a cat is?  Everything is this homogeneous clay-like color, so it's tough to easily differentiate anything.  Plus, all of the nerves and vessels are tiny, thread-like, and very friable, so it's a little frustrating.  Comparing a cat's thorax to that of a 70 pound dog emphasize how much more challenging the cat insists on being.

Also got my second anatomy exam back today and did exactly the same as I did on the first (to the point), so at least I'm consistent!  If I can pull that grade on the third massive one, I'll be super-thrilled.  We're supposed to get our physiology exams back tomorrow, so hopefully that'll have some good news attached.

Plus...less than two days until my next visit with my guy! :)