Today was surprisingly fun. We started off with some great lectures by two medical examiners for our county. The first was so deadpan it reminded me of Bones. "Our hospital is a regional trauma center, so people come from other counties to die here," she said, completely deadpan.
For lunch we had a (catered) lunch panel put on by the infectious disease interest group about the ebola outbreak in western Africa. The moral of the story from the dean of the school of public health was that, while ebola is nasty and we should stay informed so that we can calm the public, the flu will kill tens of thousands of americans this year (like every year) and we'd save more lives urging people to get their flu shot than anything we can individually do about the hemorrhagic fever that's making headlines.
In the afternoon we had a microbiology lab, where we got to perform several laboratory tests, including confirming our own blood types (A+ confirmed!). This was the first time we've gotten to stab each other so far in our training. The blood typing was surprisingly easy (if you have serum antibodies for A, B and Rh factor lying around). Just mix a drop of blood with each of the antibody solutions and see if the RBCs clump. Only one person we tested found a different result from what they thought their blood type was. Still not sure how that happens...
Finally, this evening I went to my first volunteering event of the year at the nearby juvenile detention facility. This year, I'm co-president of the club that organizes this and it was fun leading the activity we did today. It's one more thing on my already over-full plate, but well worth the effort to bring a little fun to some really nice if troubled kids.
TIL: Cranial gun shot wounds (GSWs) can appear stellate (star-like) because the tiny distance between the skin and attached bone of the skull can't diffusely distribute the force of the impact resulting in blunt force tearing. Also, entrance wounds are usually rough around the edges because the spinning bullet tears at the tissue as it twists through the skin. This is usually not the case by the time the bullet exits the body (if it does so).
In front-impact car accidents the driver often dies from internal bleeding due to a transected aorta. The location of the tear is often very specific to the site of the insertion of the ligamentum arteriosum. As a random aside, I haven't mentioned that vestigial shunt since over a year ago! Time flies when you're having... let's call it fun.
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