Headaches and bets

So I'm currently taking neuroscience aka neuroanatomy aka useless course about the brain and I'm pretty sure the coolest stuff I've learned so far is about headaches. Mainly because I have so many headaches and they're so awesome. Okay, clearly they're not awesome, but sometimes I feel so miserable, I want to pull my brain out of my skull (and thus awe-inspiring, thus awesome to learn about).

Anyway, discovered pretty definitively that I have tension-type headaches. It makes me feel better knowing I can name it something and knowing that I'm doing basically everything I can about them. It also makes me feel better that I don't have like, an epidural hematoma or something ridiculous like that. Although, it would still be cool to get an MRI or CT of my brain and see if I have some, like, genetic defect of my brain that cause me to have headaches (names of these syndromes I have completely, utterly forgotten). Sometimes, other people's misery makes yours look so... stupid.

One thing that was mentioned in conjunction with tension-type headaches is that the victims (me) are at high risk / show higher incidence of depression. Very interesting piece of information because I'm highly depressive about school. But see, now that I know that my depression stems from my headaches, it makes me feel a lot better about it!! And thus, I feel like I can try to tackle it head-on. I'll let you know how it goes.

In other news in my life, Tom and I have several bets going on. First bet came when he read some article (I never read articles anymore and so thus must rely on Tom for all outside-wordly-information) about how scientists discovered that junk food is addicting or something equally ridiculous. I told him that I thought it was ridiculous so he bet me that I couldn't go a month without eating chips. See, this is a pretty powerful bet because I basically eat chips like it's my job, especially when I get stressed out (which is pretty much all the time). I have exactly... 13 days left on this bet (I have an app on my iTouch that tells me).

We also have another bet going because somewhere in my bizarre mind, I decided that I'm going to start working out in the mornings. When I told this Tom, he promptly laughed in my face and said, "You won't be able to go a WEEK getting up that early to work out." And thus, I am now on my 3rd day of going to bed at 10pm and waking up at 6:30am to work out. So far, it's actually been... kind of awesome!

So basically all this betting tells me that I need external motivations to make me do things I don't generally like to do. Someone should bet me that I won't pass neuro because I have a test tomorrow and I really, really, really could not care less right now!

Reasons Why I Hate Anatomy

I wanted to write a post about this for at least a week now because the reasons why I hate anatomy aren't really for the obvious reasons. The amount of material isn't really terribly bad (yet) and honestly, the smell is not uber-unbearable. This is because we no longer use a purely formaldehyde-based preservative and use instead, an ethyl alcohol one. Also, my group's body (we named him Henry, after Lord Henry) has very little fat and is therefore not entirely gross to handle.

Anyway, here is my list:

1. I hate when they tell us things that are related to what we're studying but don't actually tell us what those related things do. Or where they are. Or what they're for. Except in relation to the thing we're studying. This happens quite a lot. Sometimes, they'll even say, "oh, you'll learn about this structure a little later, so don't worry about it." Except we're responsible for that structure NOW --not later!

2. Related to #1, I hate it when they tell us we're not responsible for something.... except we are. This is an impossible standard because we're not required to learn EVERY artery, vein, and muscle in the body - it's just too much and not very relevant to becoming a physician. So they tell us the important ones and sometimes say we don't have to know certain things. Except we do have to know them. Except when we don't. See what I'm getting at?

3. I hate it when they keep referring to an idea and say, "Oh but you'll get this lecture in a couple of weeks from Dr. X so don't worry about it now." I hate it because, invariably, they will talk about this idea again. And again. And again. And I still have not had that lecture telling me what exactly it is. Can't I just have that other lecture first? PLEASE?

4. I hate it how there are many ways to say the same thing in anatomy... BUT THEY NEVER TELL US THAT THEY'RE REFERRING TO THE SAME THING. I was going around for the longest time worrying about the difference between the "accessory nerve" and "cranial nerve #XI" except... they're the same thing. Somehow, I'm just supposed to know.. or figure it out that they're referring to the same thing. WTF. Such a waste of time on my part to figure it out when they could just tell me.

So my theme here is, I believe anatomy is exceedingly poorly structured. Let me reiterate, exceedingly poorly structured. I guess there is no helping it since everything is interconnected in the human body and you must always be faced with more than the scope of what you're studying in the immediate term. I suppose there is no such thing as an "isolated" body part. But then, maybe that's just why I Hate Anatomy. Because everything is always supremely confusing.

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What's I'm studying now: serratus anterior