Insects, the League of Nations, goats, socks and coins

Not much to report from me, sorry.  Friday was kind of fun, in that it became apparent that nothing much I was exposed to was going to be assessable.  Oh sure, it's possible that jamming steel prongs up people's noses is an expected competency, but I don't think it'll make or break me to be honest.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

First up we had a lecture from some kind of arthropod.  No wait - he didn't look like he had an exoskeleton, he must have been an orthopod.  The lecture was pretty light.  The only things I really took in were that the humerus is "not a happy bone and is full of black ingratitude" (I don't know what that means but it made me laugh) and a useful three-point grading scale applicable to most medical or surgical situations.

1. "Oh yeah."
2. "Oh no."
3. "Oh shit!"

The afternoon was some clinical stuff from the ENT guys.  Now I'm not that keen on entomology but as it turns out none of this was about insects either!  The first station was run by President Woodrow Wilson.  I think it was supposed to be about the neck but he spent almost all the time talking on his phone to his wife so we really only got the various triangles of the neck (again) and a reminder of how to examine the lymph nodes.

The second station was looking at the larynx or, as I like to call it, the larnyx, because that way it sounds like some kind of exotic goat.  This was quite interesting.  The larnyx is a bit like a little sock puppet in your neck.  You can use it to make all sorts of noises like, "aaaah", "aaaaaaaah", "aaaaaaaaah", and "hyachhh", just like an exotic goat.  The "hyachhh" noise is the sound of a giant blob of white mucus leaping out of the larnyx and out of the video screen like those old movies of trains coming towards the screen that made people panic and run out of cinemas.  I didn't run out of the consulting room, but I did decide at that point that ENT was not for me.

The third station was not really a station.  They must have miscalculated how many people there were, or maybe someone didn't turn up.  We just sat in the waiting area and one of the entomologists banged on about ear syringing and nosebleeds.  It was probably useful info but I couldn't pay attention because he was sitting too close to me for my liking and kept making eye contact with me and I started to hyperventilate.

The fourth station was also not that detailed.  We looked into each others ears with otoscopes (Latin for "ear-looker").  It's obligatory to make jokes like, "Congratulations, you have a brain!" so we did that and the consultant said we'd fit in just fine.  The best part of this station was the giant tendon hammer that we noticed on a trolley.  The head of it was the size of a saucer.  I don't know why an entomologist would need such a big tendon hammer unless he was testing the reflexes of a pony, and why would he do that?  It's not an insect, right?  Or is it????

The fifth station was where we got to bang tuning forks on our elbows until we were able to play Mozart's Verdankt sei es dem Glanz (German for "Thank you for them glands"), which is a traditional song to be sung while examing the lymph nodes of the neck.  You can also use it to diagnose conductive or sensorineural hearing loss.  The procedure is to play the song on the tuning forks, and if the patient remains in the room, they probably have conductive or sensorineural hearing loss.

The sixth and final station was the aforementioned jamming of steel prongs up each other's noses.  There's no real skill to this - when I was a kid I jammed my Older Brother's whole coin collection up my nose. In fact, it is so easy that they force you to hold the prongs in your left hand in this bizarre way that really hurts your fingers.  Thus, they can spend years training you to do it and also charge people lots of money.  Plus I think if you pull any money out of someone else's nose it's yours to keep.

So that was my Friday at uni learning to be a doctor.  I'm pretty sure that 5 days a week of this for four years straight is going to make me an awesome doctor.  Or a raving madman.  Either way, I'll be able to wear some pretty colourful socks, and isn't that why we're all here?