Head and Neck: Day 1

So this might be a little gruesome, but today we finally looked at the face of our cadaver. Truthfully, it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be because the skin (the most distinctly personal and identity-tied part of the body) didn't stay on for too long. But moving on to the less gross parts of my day... We looked at the muscles, nerves and arteries of the face, which are pretty cool things. The facial expression muscles are ridiculous! But if you think about it, we communicate with our non-verbals so frequently and most of that communication occurs with our facial expressions.

Over the lunch hour we had a meeting for the Pediatric Interest Group (PIG). A Child Life specialist from the hospital came over to talk to us about the hospital buddies program. You can watch a little about the program here. It was really emotional for me when I was learning about the program because it reminded me so much of my Memphis kiddos (one of the young girls looked IDENTICAL to one of my CHC kiddos). During the presentation, I had an overwhelming feeling of missing my good friend Rachel who is also a Child Life specialist. Rachel is quite a bit more energetic than the lady I met today, but few people in the world have as much energy as Rachel does (few people are also as awesome and nice as she is either).

This lady was teaching us about "getting on the child's level" so that you're not talking down to the child. I started giggling because I remember messing with Rachel and moving up, down, left and right while talking to her. She would adjust her level without even realizing and we would just laugh. It was evil, but oh-so-funny at the same time. I miss Rachel very, very much and think of her often. I hope that she and Bo are doing well and I know that her kiddos at Le Bonheur absolutely love her! I'm also sure that she's making billions of spiderweb flow charts on sticky notes still. :)

Well, I'm already feeling overwhelmed with the information we were given today in just two short hours of lecture and two hours of lab. I'm off to study! A large cup of coffee and Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy are calling my name!