End of week 4, facing down week 5. Our second big exam is on Monday. Gross anatomy: bones, muscles (origin, insertion, and action of all of them), nerves, and blood vessels of the neck, shoulder, and forearm of the dog and cat (there are some big differences between those two species). We've had two pretty simple quizzes but this exam will be the real deal. It will have the usual written component. However, there will be a lot more to this particular exam. The instructors will pull out all of our dissected dogs and cats and use them to test us on identification. We will also have to palpate a live dog and identify specific structures.
Palpation just means feeling or manipulating something with your fingers. We have a two-page list of structures that we need to be able to identify by palpation.
Fortunately, I have the most unbelievably perfect palpation specimen right in my own home: Azza. Her limbs are exaggerated in their length and her coat is short and tight to her skin. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that in low light falling at an oblique angle on her forelimbs, I could see the individual muscles and tendons. It's amazing. The deltoid tuberosity on her humerus bone is enormous. She has no body fat so I can feel individual vertebrae, all of the borders of the scapula, even individual bones in her sternum. I just spent 15 minutes checking off items on the palpation list: styloid process of radius bone, brachial artery, origin of sternocephalicus muscle, acromion of the scapula bone, etc.
Anticipating my need to use them for this purpose, I've been slowly working up to palpation as massage for both Azza and HellBeast. It's basic operant conditioning: hold still and I pet you, and maybe I sort of squeeze this part of your forelimb or shoulder for a second or two. Since the cat is a bit more reactive to being touched, I gently palpate his forelimb and shoulder when he's relaxed and mostly asleep in bed at night. The suprahamate process on his scapula bone is lovely.
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