My favorite show is back on!!! I LOVED the show Hopkins, where they had cameras inside Johns Hopkins hospital following different surgeons and ER staff. Now they are doing a show called Boston Med which is more awesome because I recognize the shots of Boston they show, and they are following medical staff at MGH, the Brigham, and Children's. In the first episode they had to do jaw reconstruction on the police officer, and at one point the surgeon said "We have to be careful of the nerve in that area." I shouted in my head "MANDIBULAR BRANCH OF FACIAL NERVE CN7, DAMAGE WOULD MEAN HE COULDN'T CLOSE HIS LIPS TOGETHER" because I had actually seen it during anatomy. It was pretty cool. It is a great, great show, so inspiring. The first episode they showed a lung transplant and I never get tired of seeing the lungs inflate. It's not bloody or gory, and that's why I think everyone should watch it (or Hulu it, if 10pm Thursday night is too late for you too :)). It will make you laugh, cry, inspire you...such a great show and the soundtrack is great too.

In Anatomy we have flipped our cadaver over and are working on the back. My group did the superficial muscles of the back and the back of the neck, which was actually the hardest dissection I think we've had so far. The stakes are higher because now we are getting graded on our dissections. It's too bad because we rocked our dissections of the face and front of the neck and I think we would have gotten a good grade. The B group got to do the vertebrae and spinal cord, and it was pretty neat going in and seeing what they had done (plus they got to use hammers and chisels on the vertebrae, which is fun). Seeing the spinal cord is really neat. It's actually a bunch of cords bundled together. I didn't realize that it was so short, but it ends at the top part of your lower back. It then breaks down into a bunch of cords known as the cauda equina (horse tail) as it goes through your sacrum and down to your legs. Fun fact: some people can have single nerve cells that are 6-7 feet long, depending on how tall you are. That is pretty incredible.

We have a 3.5 day weekend to enjoy the holiday, and I am excited to be able to do so in Philadelphia. It was a tough decision not to go home to Maine (cabin on lake, seafood cookout) or Mass (house on private beach in Cape Cod, can see all the fireworks), but financially it made the most sense to stay here. There is TONS going on because of the history of the city. Tonight I'm going with some classmates to see the Philadelphia Orchestra play in sync with the fireworks, and then tomorrow there are free concerts all day ending with the Goo Goo Dolls, a parade, and fireworks. I'm definitely excited about that. Next week we will have a BUSY three days of class (16 hours of lab and 12 hours of lecture), but another three day weekend. The long weekend will be helpful because the week after is a big exam week. I've been keeping up with the material so I think I should be fine.

Oh, we went over the exam and the prof ended up giving us 5 extra points which makes me a little bit happier, haha, but I still didn't do as well as I should have. At least now I know how to study for his exams and how to answer his style of questions.