I haven't been here for a while because I've been sort of busy pursuing my new field of study (see the previous post). It's taking up most of my free time these days, but that's okay because I sort of enjoy the challenge of learning something new and interesting.
And then there are other challenges that haven't been quite so much fun....like having to request a new disability hangtag for my car. The one I received last fall was only good for 6 months and was due to expire in a week, so I called up my neurosurgeon's office and requested that they sign the paperwork for a new one. When I went in to pick it up, it no longer says "temporary".
"Permanent" is a lot harder to see.
But on to more interesting things...I'm taking a course through an online program called CareerStep to learn medical coding and billing. I started last month and have been working my way through the individual learning "modules" (does anyone else instantly think of Marvin the Martian and his 'space modulators' here?) one by one. I am currently half-way through the longest one to date, Medical Terminology. I am painstakingly reading every single word of this 1000+ page textbook (which may or may not be the only textbook to date that I will have read all the way through....sorry Mom and Dad, but I got good grades anyhow!!). So far I've learned about the skin, the skeletal system, medical word-building (things like suffixes/prefixes/root words...in Latin mainly), muscles and joints, the nervous system, the blood and lymphatic system and the cardiovascular system. It's a lot of words.
I just finished with the cardiovascular system and next up is the digestive system. I've learned a lot of new words. Words that will roll around in my brain when I'm driving along in the car or lying in bed at night as my brain tries to play with them. Some of those words include, but aren't limited to:
~ Olecranon process (basically your elbow...who knew?)
~Rhinorrhea (a runny nose)
~Erythropoiesis (process of red blood cell production)
~Gastrocnemius (main calf muscle)
~Onychomycosis (fungal nail infection
You're welcome, by the way...now maybe they can rattle around in someone else's brain for a while!
That Betty Davis Jones writes a pretty darn comprehensive textbook....with lots of pictures. (Some of which I'll have to hide from inquisitive children when I get to the male and female reproductive system sections!!)
Most of my work until the terminology module has been done on the computer. In fact, this is the only textbook I have at the moment. However, this module requires a LOT of writing. As in a half a college-ruled notebook of medical definitions....page after page of very interesting, very long words.
I kind of thought that once I graduated from college, I'd be done with (my own) homework, but life has a way of throwing curveballs, doesn't it? Still, I find all this medical stuff fascinating (and often, frighteningly too familiar). It's kind of sad when you don't even need to look up the condition because you've had it and experienced it in very real ways. But it's also helpful, I suppose.
And so that's what I've been up to lately. I'll try to keep you updated more frequently, but I make no promises!!
