And the Crickets Sang.

That's not the sound of real crickets - it's the metaphorical humming emptiness of my blog posts, and therefore my life in Dominica. I don't mean to say that it's meaningless - just that, in the grand scheme of things to post about, my experiences here have been, and are generally, miniscule. I don't want this to end up as yet another revision of my class notes, although there are some interesting course-work related things I may briefly tell you about.

Nicole and i made our way to an AMSA suture clinic and tried our hands at subcuticular stiches. This is one of those things that the layman never really thinks about, but once you slip on some surgical gloves, makes complete sense. (Please don't think me pompous for phrasing it like that; in every meaning of the word, I'm still just a layman, although one who admittedly relishes the feel of those surgical gloves). People don't like scars, and the interrupted sutures can leave these unsightly pinpricks along the scar lines. Lucky for me, the suture clinic director (who happened to be one of my dissection supervisors from last semester) is also a plastic surgeon - enter the Subcuticular suture. The point and procedure are this: suture are made as alternating, horizontal loops within the layers of the skin, such that pulling taut the thread gives the appearnce of closing the skin with an invisible zipper. I wish I could explain it better - the suturing is completely hidden from sight, and heal that way, leaving minimal scarring - a must for cosmetic surgery patients.

That was, perhaps the most interesting spot in recent memory. Oh, I could elaborate on the many contributing factors in antibody diversity, or the differential memory formations. I could even explain the highly confusing muscles, vessels, and nerves of the neck. Speaking of the neck, I actually spent yesterday dissecting out the infratemporal region - facial arteries and the like. This was actually a pretty cool lab - you see, there's this nerve bundle that runs down in your jawbone (mandible) called the infra-alveolar nerve (along with its artery) and, which takes sensation to your teeth. My table was one of 2 of 20 tables selected (ok fine - we volunteered) to carefully chisel out the entire canal and follow the course the nerve, in addition to cleaning out the facial arteries and nerves. Maybe I'm just a little odd....I greatly prefer the labs that involve chisels and saw. To make a long story short, we chiseled through the mandible to expose the canal and sawed away the upper half, opening up the cavity behind the zygomatic arch (a.k.a. cheekbone, which we also sawed away).

Aside from that, I haven't been up to much else - going to class, stealing some gym time when I can, and doing a bit of reading. I downloaded R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy, after all of these years of intending to, and sneak a few pages during the boring points in class. On Sunday, Nicole and I took a stroll along the beach - we've been down to the sea surprisingly few times this semester, and we've snapped surprisingly few pictures. Here is one of the sea, and one of a flower that is definitely an orchid.

By the way, we had a BIG test last Monday - I usually post directly after them, but I must have been caught up in something else this time (I can almost assure you that it was the surgical triangles of the neck). Anyway, this was perhaps the most conceptually difficult exam I've ever taken, but it might have been my best exam so far.