Thursday, September 6, 2012

How a Condom is like a Lung; or: Introduction to the Respiratory System

Hi again, to all of you that read my blog. I've been kind of MIA for the past month, and that's because medical school has been so busy.

Just so you know, I've completed my first exam in medical school (which I actually did well on... WOO!), and we have started anatomy lab.

I feel like dissections are the first thing people ask you about when you say you're a first-year in medical school. "You're in medical school? Have you gotten your cadavers?" is probably the most heard line I've gotten from people I've talked to.

Just recently, we started the respiratory and circulatory system; we scooped out the lungs and heart from our cadavers and dissected the heart.

To show us exactly how the lungs function in the pleural cavity, however, one of our anatomy professors decided to give a physical demonstration. Never mind that the day before, another professor had shown us exactly what happens by attaching a vacuum to a fresh cow lung. This professor used the materials she had on hand: a rubber band, a 2-liter soda bottle, and ... wait for it... a condom.

Don't ask me why, but she made the condom the "lung" in the demo by attaching the top to the soda bottle and having the condom hang down into the bottle. She then proceeded to take a vacuum and draw out the air to show us the lung inflating. If that wasn't awkward enough, she proceeded to joke that a lung and a condom were similar because they both had ribs.

I suppose the demo was effective. I will never, from this day, forget how a lung works.

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