Spinal Boot Camp

I'm thinking being under the weather a bit can help sensitize a person to what makes them feel better and what makes them feel worse. I'd have to say my drive home made me considerably worse and I'm starting to think living 2 miles from school could do more to benefit my health than even quitting smoking.

It also makes me think that there are probably derogatory effects when I'm feeling fine but probably not enough to perceive in any one trip yet, over ....oh, say six or seven years worth of this long drive that the commutes probably add up in terms of degraded health.

I know the one night I stayed in town between Irene Gold sessions it felt like an entirely different life when the trip to school was no longer than my current trip just to get to the highway.

I was just thinking that a few days ago I came to realize there was a dampening of my thoughts via my ride home - a subduing of excitement and enthusiasm. As such, I think that lends a bit of credence to my initial hypothesis that my huge ongoing commute is driving me to an early grave.

I did end up with a better grasp of parasympathetic nerves for today's efforts and a very simple drawing clearly put it in my head. Cranial Nerves 3,7,9 and 10 are parasympathetic as are sacral nerves 2, 3 & 4. That's it. The picture up top on the left is very similar to the one which made parasympathetic nerves more clear to me. If you click on the picture and expand it to full size you'll notice blue lines at the top and bottom of the picture. Those blue lines represent parasympathetic nerves.

The picture is good for clarity but rather misleading when it comes to our spinal cord. The human spinal cord only goes down to about the 1st or 2nd lumbar vertebrae yet, the first picture shows the cord as going all the way down to our tailbone (or coccyx) however, the picture above illustrating an entire person more accurately shows the spinal cord going down to about the L1, L2 vertebral level. After that point we have what's called the cauda equina which literally means, horses tail.

I think I also learned tonight that students in Tri-5 are a lot smarter in general than us people in Tri-4. I had a lot of Tri-5's sitting behind me and Tri-4's in front of me and it seemed like most of the answers that were being called out came from the folks behind me. I do remember one teacher stating that we start acting like doctors around tri-5 so, maybe that has something to do with it.

In addition to Dr. James & Dr. Laura who represented the NBS (National Boards Specialist) we also had three of our own teachers in the room who basically were there to take notes of their own which I thought was a rather impressive display of commitment and dedication on their part. Those teachers were Dr's Clifford, Ignatov and Ludwinski. Apparently, before Dr. Ignatov came to Logan our National Boards test scores on physiology weren't anything to brag about but with Dr Iggy's tenure along came better and better test scores on the physio portion of national boards. In fact, a few semesters back, Dr Ignatov agreed to let students shave his head bald if 100% of his students passed the physio portion of National Boards. Well, they did it and he got shaved bald! I don't think he wants to make that bet anymore.

I was kind of embarrassed that I didn't understand the parasympathetics better but talked to one of the Logan doctors after class and he said school was kind of like trying to take a drink of water from a fire hose turned on full blast. That immediately made sense to me.