apparently... i'm retarded...
as usual on fortnightly tuesdays, i attended my human anatomy practical from 10am to 12pm today. and as usual in these pracs... not a single person is spared from being 'violated' in the name of education. two weeks ago we had to palpate the arm and shoulder to study the pectoral girdle... a task, you can imagine, a lot easier for the boys than it is for the girls -_-".
today, it was the hip joint. but just as we rejoiced in the notion that we wouldn't be needing to draw the line between male and female propriety, our tutor troy does well to cease our relief...
first, it was the very public and very embarassing task of identifying the illiac crest. for those of you who consider this relative greek, know that it's the most anterior or upper part of your pelvis. basically the bony thing you can feel around your waist *yana envisions many readers around the world poking their tummies* ;) so for a girl like me - who prides herself on dressing in long layers to maintain the optical illusion of being skinny - it was absolutely awful having to ride my jacket and two tops up to find those ridiculous bony landmarks. mind you... WITH AN ENTIRE CLASS OF CLOSE TO 20 PEOPLE PRESENT! sigh...
then it was the duty of determining the range of motion at our hips. the theory is an imbalance in muscle function can cause you to possess an abnormal body stance. in translation, you pelvis could tilt anteriorly (front) or posteriorly (back) with respect to whichever muscle is working too hard or too little. with the target of the day being the quads, hamstrings and glutes, the powers that be in the deakin syllabus world thought it prudent - and undoubtedly rather amusing - to have the students lie on the ground with their feet up in the air.
now this would usually be fine. me and my co-victim in crime, steph, would take turns in succumbing to the humiliation and the two hours would be over with. but today, steph came in with a terrible cold. so i figured it a bad idea for her to lying on the dusty ground with its cleanliness in question. so there i was... at 10 o'clock in the morning... with my multi-layered top and baggy jeans... flat on the ground with steph moving my leg around as though i was an unstrung puppet!
the first task saw me on my back with one leg up in the air. steph had her palm underneath my thoracic spine (lower back) and was told to lift my leg up as high as it would go until she could feel my spine crushing down on her hand - this meant that i had exhausted my glutes and hamstrings, so further movement would be my pelvis compensating... which would be bad. troy told us that clinically, people should get a 14o degree range of motion.
my leg went 167.
steph's response? "oh my god you're a freak..."
the second excercise required me to be face down on the ground (imagine walking past the classroom at this point... very interesting indeed...). steph had to palpate the spinous process of my third thoracic vertebra (translation: bony bit on my lower back). the rule was, my leg had to be flexed at the knee until she could no longer feel the spinous process. this meant that my spine was changing it's postion to accomodate the movement... yet again... a bad thing. but as steph bent my knee... nothing happened. she tried again... slower... nothing happened. she tried hyperflexing my knee... nothing happened! ;)
steph's response? "you're a freak..."
just when you thought the humiliation was over... we had to bend over and touch our toes. that would be simple enough, if only troy didn't make steph hold one side of my waist while i did it :D this was supposed to test, once again, the condition of my hip when i bent over. troy explained that the ideal configuration would be that of our pelvis doing a 60 degree tilt, as our spine took over the remaining 30 in a 90 degree bend. but what usually happens when people bend over to pick up stuff, they use their back/spine entirely and don't abide by the pelvic rule at all. when steph got me to bend over (no dirty thoughts kevin!), my ballet instincts kicked in and i went straight for my toes. with or without my back, this was something i'd been trained to do since i was 4-years-old.
steph's response? "oh my god... you just went like... went like... kat you're a freak..."
so as troy explained that if anyone didn't react as they were supposed to because they were flexible, steph decided to spare everyone the curiosity and point directly at me.
just another day in human anatomy :D
