End of week 4

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 I need a new sentence to start these posts with - I can't keep saying "what a day!".

Today I had my first test of the semester - a mini test in pharmacology. Normally we'd have one every week, just a 15 minute thing to test our knowledge from the previous week. My housemate and I went to campus early to review everything. After that was done, we learnt some stuff about local anaesthetics - they work by blocking the Na channel in nerves, so action potentials can't be generated, so no nerve transmission occurs. At the end of the lesson, I got to put some eye drops into a rabbit and see how the eye reflexes (palpebral, corneal and pupillary) were affected.

My first patient of the semester

After pharmacology, we had anaesthesia. This was such a cool lesson, because I got to practice nerve blocks in a cadaver. I did a retrobulbar, auriculopalpebral, rostral maxillary, caudal maxillary, and an epidural. Obviously it's very different doing this in a cadaver compared to a real animal but it was pretty cool to do some hands-on stuff! I can't wait to put this into practice.

Lastly, we had a pathophysiology seminar. That was a bit harder, but it was interesting having to pull all the information I've learnt from previous subjects (highlights included biochemistry, biophysics and nutrition). 

Unfortunately our propedeutics teacher was sick today so that lesson was cancelled. I came home and had a nap, and then a slow evening. I've got a credit test in pathophysiology next week, so tomorrow I'm going to go to the library and do some past paper questions. I've got a big pile of parasites to learn about too!

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