silly med school stories....first edition

i thought i would share the funniest thing that's happened this year so far.

so i told you about my cadaver, how they gave us a shorthand version of the death certificate, but the rest was left for us to uncover? that included the sex of the body....

well, we began dissection on the thorax, the chest. by all appearances, the cadaver was male. we weren't an inquisitive bunch...so we left it at that...

though i started to have my doubts...

at the end of the thorax segment, we began on the abdomen and pelvis. we uncovered the cadaver.

yeah, definitely female. whoops!

(the best part is yet to come)

well, i wasn't really that shocked...i had doubts, as i mentioned...but then chris, one of my lab partners came in. came over to the body. and almost fell over with surprise.

it was one of the best shocked looks i have ever seen. he had no clue that we had a female. he couldn't even speak, he just stared at us, with a quizzical, "is someone playing a joke on me?" expression on his face.

just seems odd to have a relationship with a person for a few weeks and not know whether they're a boy or girl....

i don't think chris has recovered yet...

(p.s. the table next to us made a similar discovery....a week after we did...guess we weren't the only uninquisitive group of med students....)

(p.p.s. it was really funny in person...i know it's hard to write things down so everyone can appreciate it...i wish i had a pic of chris's face to help...)

hand me that piano

so it was thanksgiving. i had my exam, it was hard, but it's now but a distant memory...until my grade comes back...ignorance is bliss.

break was very nice, as breaks should be. i saw lots of family, and friends. pete came up, i held my baby cousin, and we moved a piano. which was not easy (who's shocked?).

school went well today. i feel much more ready to go than i did at the beginning of the last segment. we started on the neck today. i really like dissecting. you only really dissect for a couple days, then you just spend lab time pointing at things and naming them. that's boring. the fun part is the first couple days, picking apart the vessels from the muscles, et cetera.

i also went swimming today, for the first time in weeks. it felt wonderful, except for when my ankle started hurting (i sprained it a couple weeks ago), so then i stopped. but it's good to be back, people are in better moods, we have time to hang out, no one looks like zombie. we feel like people again.

oh, and for auntie karen: here's a map of nz. looks like christchurch is on the water. though i don't remember seeing it when i was there.

nap time...for arlin.....

i was studying with arlin for my exam on wednesday (yeah, studying with arlin again, it's good), when he laid back and closed his eyes and started answering my questions with grunts. so i sent him upstairs to his room for a nap, and i thought i'd take the opportunity to write in here.

so, an exam. whoop-de-do. kinda feels like i just had one, right? yeah, for me too. but this one will be much harder...lots more information...both practical and written...on the abdom and pelvis....i'm realizing how much stuff i missed when i was in my distracted/worried state for most of the other week. there's like blackholes in my knowledge, and now it's getting harder to figure stuff out.

well, i just had a visitor, jen the nurse. she likes to come by and chat right when i'd like to do something else. but she's alright. since she's actually working in the hospital, she'll remind us of what we are here for. which apparently has a lot of poo involved.

~~edit~~

Arlin came back, we studied a bit more. now i'm watching elf on tv. how lovely...

post #21

i couldn't think of a better title. i'm sorry. normally i wait to write until i decide on a title. but this time i thought i would just write anyway.


so thank you for all your comments. it's been a bit of a rocky week. heather, i liked what you said about sitting sheva. that's totally what i've been feeling like i'm doing. cuz really, there are no words. i saw "little miss sunshine" tonight, which was an excellent movie, by the way. there was a poignant moment when one character was really upset by a devastating discovery. his family didn't know what to do, so his little sister who's seven went up to him and just sat next to him and put his arm around him. it was very beautiful (oh, random trivia, the word sheva is the word for seven, i think).

in other news, i'm a little frustrated by my anatomy class, in that i feel like i have no time to study. and then i feel like i can't contribute in lab or with friends because i don't know anything! everyone else is so confident...i don't know if it's a cover or not, but i get intimidated.

no one is allowed to say that i would know more if i didn't go see a movie tonight but studied instead.

i have an exam in a week. then thanksgiving break, hallelujah. i am thankful.

this week is impressionist week on letterman. not as fun as ventriloquist week.

the end.

prayer

i had a test this week, on tuesday, got the grade back today. oddly enough, that wasn't the biggest thing that happened this week.

i'm not really sure what to say, don't want to tell more than i should (confidentiality issues, i am almost a doctor), but i learned more about kelvin and what's going on with him, and it kinda shook me up. distracting me from school. which really isn't good for the whole learning to be a doctor thing. so i've been spending the last couple days trying to figure out how to be a good friend. it's been hard, i keep losing focus on what i'm doing and start to think about the situation. and implications. and what i believe about God and life and stuff. undergrad kinda changed my views a bit on life and God, or at least made me more wary of trite answers and corny things. i learned to scoff at optimistic religiosity. but now i'm feeling like i don't have anything to offer, and that is a depressing thought.

so i think i'll start to rethink some of the things i've thrown to the wayside the last few years. or at least start working under the assumption that certain things are helpful. like prayer. right now, i have to believe that it's worth something. cuz the alternative scares me.

so please, pray for kelvin (and me). a lot. cuz i will be. like nonstop.

first cut is the deepest

so, i was requested to give more info about the lab. if you don't care to hear about what goes on in anatomy lab, please avert your eyes now.



ok, i know you all are still reading, because who can help their curiosity? it's like a special invitation when you know there might be something gross/scary/outrageous following....


but first, i realized i had a missing post, it got saved as a draft instead of being published. see below: "molecular foundations....". by the way, i got my grade back for that class, and i passed. thank goodness.

ok, back to lab. well, i chose this title because i was the first in my group to make a cut on our cadaver. they give us an altered version of the death certificate, so i know that i have a 76 year old male who died of metastatic melanoma in january. so when we can't identify something, we just say it's cancer. we're not doctors yet....

so lab is pretty cool. it smells gross, but in a formaldehyde-y sort of way. some of the bodies do smell a little grosser, in a rotten sort of way. our cadaver is actually pretty good. we were able to preserve lots of veins and arteries and nerves while dissecting, so that's good. i'm at table 13, of 20 something. we all wear scrubs, like cool people. but we're not allowed to wear them outside of lab (per new york state law). so we only look cool to each other. some people get more grossed out than others because of lab. i personally don't, except when a body smells really gross. but my roommate hasn't had meat for a week, and i know there's others like her. my friend arlin is really bothered by smells, in general, so he doesn't like too much time in there. case in point, he's bothered by the smell in the laundry room. the clean laundry smell! how weird is that. well, it's ok.

i think the cool thing about lab is it's so conducive to learning. i guess the set up of anatomy class in general. we have lecture, and then see what we're talking about, touch it, talk about it to others, and then can review all of that. there's not many things that are able to incorporate so many good ways of learning so easily. my teacher genes approve.

there's not much else going on in my life, except that there's some interesting fissures within the group now. one of my friends "like liked" my roommate, but she did not return the favor. it didn't get too bad, except that i think he's kinda depressed now and i don't know how to help. the other split is between another friend of ours, a girl, (i don't have a lot of girl friends, so it's worth noting) and most of the guys i hang out with. i don't really know the extent of it, but she's been kinda ignoring them/yelling at them, but acting like nothing's wrong to me. but the whole weekend got kinda soured by it. i feel very protective of my friends, and i want everyone else to as well! we have so much other stress in our lives, i hate there being extra stress from within the support system. not fair.

so i have an exam on tuesday on the thorax (lungs, heart, backbone, chest wall, associated nerves, arteries, veins). i think it'll be fine. tonight i made dinner with some of my friends, which was very nice. i like cooking, i should really do it more. just warming up frozen dinners does not count as cooking. but i don't like cooking alone...i think we can remedy that.

thanks for all the comments on the last post! it made me excited. i appreciated the sympathy on the albany business. i hope you guys are doing well, i miss seeing everybody!

ok, time for bed....