Thanks Mom & Dad!

I owe a debt of gratitude to my parents for all their help and support during my first trimester at Logan.  For many students, midterms were like a giant wave crashing over our heads.  After the tsunami type wave crashed over my head I asked my parents for any help I could get and they came through with flying colors.  Every day they could, they would stop by to let my dog out during the day, wash dishes, help with laundry, vacuum and even make my bed.  All their efforts helped to make a world of difference regarding my ability to study since they took care of so much of the mundane yet necessary task of day to day living since I could then readily imbue myself in my studies and not be distracted by the immense levels of entropy which had been gripping my home.  

Today was reasonably productive.  I headed back to Logan to make up one quiz I had missed in anatomy that was given during our last week of class.  The stress levels in school can get amazingly high which is well understood amongst classmates.  My mental blow-out happened during the last  two days of class.  Another student I talked with admitted he had blown up at a couple other classmates during the same time period.  A number of classmates simply dropped classes such as biochemistry and/or anatomy weeks before the end while others stuck it out only to find an F as their final grade.  

I'm reminded of Roosevelt's quote "The credit belonging to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly, who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at the best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

A chunk of our classmates have been removed and will not be graduating with us and from what I understand, we'll lose another chunk of people in the 2nd trimester.  I've been told whoever is left standing in Trimester 3 is pretty much the group of people we'll be graduating with.  

After my make up test today I headed to see my MD as recommended by my DC to get some meds for my amazingly high triglyceride levels.  The doctor was amazingly nice and rounded up a bad full of samples, actually two months worth of Crestor and another name brand drug she wanted me to take over the next 7 weeks before my next checkup and she also wrote out a prescription for a couple more blood test to be taken before my next meeting with her.  

I did chat with my MD a bit about Gross Anatomy and she mentioned that her class didn't get to dissect the brain or lungs during her tenure at school but instead had a pre-dissected brain brought in for study.  I've heard some of the chiropractic schools use pre-dissected bodies as well and I'm sure it has much to do with the tremendous cost of providing individual bodies for everybody to dissect but it really seemed foreign to me not to dissect a body to study the various parts.  A concern from my DC was that the added resistance on my heart due to the high triglyceride levels combined with intense cardio would give cause for my heart to enlarge.  The MD I saw today didn't seem to subscribe much to that theory but I've personally seen, felt and held many human hearts in my hands, both from our cadavers bodies as well as from the bucket of hearts we have in the cadaver lab and I can tell you from personal experience that hearts can and do get enlarged and since the heart is a muscle I can also vouch for the notion that resistance against a muscle can give rise to an enlarged heart.  

I checked out the Wal-Mart website for a list of $4 drugs to see which ones would be compatible with lowering cholesterol and triglyceride levels and did find a couple statins I figured would work.  The MD wanted to use some name brand drugs for the first couple months to start with then pending positive results switch over to one of the other two drugs I had found.  It was very interesting reading about the way the statins work.  In short, statins are referred to as an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor.  Regarding cholesterol, all this really means is there are a number of metabolic steps the body must go through to make cholesterol and the drug inhibits one of those steps.  It's like if you had enough pieces and parts to make 100 cars then took away 25 engines, then you could only make a total of 75 cars because you'd be missing some of the pieces to make all 100 cars.  The statins work the same way in regards to cholesterol.  I wasn't as familiar with the mechanisms behind triglyceride inhibition but do have a 2nd drug to help lower those levels.  

On one hand I'm wondering how much the lowered levels of fatty acids in my blood might contribute to my overall happiness because overall I tend to be rather chipper.  One other curious note was that my blood pressure was actually high.  This is very abnormal for me because it's generally a tried and true 120/80 and the diastolic reading is generally below the 80 mark.  I hypothesised that maybe the stress of finals had something to do with it and maybe there was some residual cortisol coursing through my veins resulting in the higher readings.  The MD concurred it was a reasonable hypothesis so I'll go with that for now and just be sure to take it easy and regain some homeostasis in my life during this break.  

The last good thing I got done today was to get my homeowners insurance renewed.  My hypothesis there is that I never got the renewal notice in the mail to begin with.  When I bypassed my insurance agent and talked directly to the insurance company I found out they were missing basic information on me, simply things like....address ...phone number ....

yeah ....well, it's taken care of now.

The picture today is of the brain, looking at it from underneath.  I was reading a book this afternoon called "Clinical Neuroanatomy made rediculously simple"  That title alone sounds like an oxymoron if I've ever heard one!