Will You Look Up My Nose?

In our small group session, we practiced the basic head & neck, thorax & lungs examination on each other.

This basically meant we all got a tad more intimate with some people we've been hanging around with for too long.

We played with penlights and checked the direct and consensual light reaction (constrictions of the pupils). We half-assed the Snellen card exam since I should hope all of us already knew whether or not we needed eyeglasses and we took turns blinding each other with the ophthalmoscope until we figured out the dim setting.

We convinced a girl that we wouldn't judge her for having a dirty ear as she tried to wheedle her way out of getting it checked with the otoscope:

"I think I have earwax."

          "It's okay."

"No, really, it's stuck up there and I can't get rid of it! Q-tips don't work! Please, no!"

"Oh, silly, you're funny. It's okay. We doubt you'd be the last dirty ear we'd be seeing."

"No, really -"

"Just sit down."

The doctor then looked in my ear as a demonstration for the other students because everyone seemed to be having a hard time with it; apparently, we all have narrow ear canals. Nothing like having your classmates hovering around to study the inside of your ear to make a girl feel self-conscious.

Then we looked up a girl's nose. Then we looked up a sick girl's nose and admired her swollen turbinates. Then we made sick girl open up her mouth so we could inspect her swollen tonsils; white patches! We think it's a viral infection and we were so excited over the girl's sickness, it was pretty sad.

We went over the neck's lymph nodes and moved on to inspecting the thorax and lungs. Our small group sessions are separated into groups by sex so we had a bunch of girls pulling off their sweaters and unzipping their hoodies so that we can practice better in our tank tops. Of course, that's when some guys decided to wander over by our room. The doctor gave them a pointed look. "Do you need anything?"

"No, we're just -" They got the door slammed in their faces.

When one of the girls tried respiratory excursion on me (palpation by cupping your hands around the patient's posterior thorax to observe for symmetry), I'm ashamed to say I broke out into uncontrollable giggles. I'm extremely ticklish and just barely restrained myself from elbowing the girl in her face to free myself.

We went through tactile fremitus, percussion (that was fun), and auscultation. I think we're all healthy.