Tri-8 Wk12, Days 513 & 514, Thur & Fri, 7/28 & 7/29

I survived. Two solid months of mandatory 5 day per week clinic is FINALLY over. Like a lot of people I was saving the gist of my vacation days for finals but it looks like the start of the next semester is our first day of finals for the current semester. I'm not sure I quite understand that because you don't actually move on to the next semester until you've passed all your classes. oh well.

I put in vacation request for 8/5 and 8/12, two Fridays in a row and now that I'm back to a normal clinic schedule that means I'm already off on Thursday and now on Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday!!! - Five Days in a ROW! YeeHaw!

I'm not exactly sure what's going on in school.

I really had no solution for effectively dealing w/ the abhorrent schedule I was subjected to over the past couple months. About all I can say is that it's a good thing I don't own a shotgun. I have been learning quite a bit but, not necessarily anything specific to any current classes. This reminds me of the special class I was put in during grade school where us higher motivated types of students wrote out on a contract what we wanted to work on during the week.

One interesting thing I studies was the primary and secondary ossification centers in the metacarpals and the phalanges. Both metacarpals and phalanges have primary ossification centers centrally located along their shafts but the phalanges have secondary ossification centers proximally, at their bases while the metacarpals have their secondary ossification center distally located. BUT WAIT - only metacarpals 2, 3, 4 and 5 have secondary ossification distally and metacarpal #1 (the one attached to the thumb) has a PROXIMAL secondary ossification center which means in terms of ossification the first metacarpal is more like a phalanx. Makes me wonder if things were misnamed originally... this same phenomenon occurs in the foot.

with the carpal bones, ossification starts at the capitate and kind of spirals around in a counter-clockwise direction but, the age at which these carpals ossify isn't exactly one per year but more like 2-3 months for the first two then age 3,4 and 5 for the 3rd 4th and 5th but, also year five for the 6th and 7th. then the pisiform which is just a nifty little sesamoid bone finally ossifies between the ages of 9 to 12.

I've also been going over some of the neural pathways, specifically w/ the eyes and the various reflexes. Unilateral cranial nerve palsy has also become an interest mainly because it's now clinically relevant and we've got real people involved. Of course ...I'd say about 1/2 the people I'm working with and trying to learn things for aren't even official patients from my clinic but still people that come to me with issues so I do the best I can.

...got severely sidetracked here - oh well, that's it for now :)