The PMI

Our first day of classes, with Pathophysiology in the morning and clinical lab in the afternoon. In lab, we washed our hands after applying "glow germ" so that we could look under a black light at the spots we missed. I've heard of this being done by a lot of health departments, but hadn't ever gone through the exercise myself. I washed my hands well, and when I put them in the black light box I discovered my fingernails were positively radioactive. I'd already removed my rings. Now I have to cut my beautiful nails. How sad.

Last Friday we were given the lab syllabus, which noted that on our second day of lab, we all need to bring bathing suits because we're going to give each other bed baths. How awkward! I barely know these people; I'm not really ready for them to scrub my nether regions.

Today however, we were taking pulses. I had a difficult time at first, but after the second hour, I'm pretty confident that I at least know what I'm looking for, even if I can't always find it. One of the places we had to find was the PMI, or the point of maximal impact. This is the spot on the chest where the heart is closest to the chest wall and to find it, you have to count your way down the intercostal spaces and then move away from the midline. It just so happens that on women, the PMI is often behind/below the left breast. So today, I was moving around breasts - my own and my classmates - looking for this thing and it quickly lost it's weirdness. During breaks, it was common for one student to turn to another and say "can I find your PMI/brachial artery/etc." I guess the bath thing won't be that big a deal either.