My favorite day of the year! Daylight savings.
I spent my extra hour catching up on House. Wow, that last episode where House and Cuddy....just, whoa, hello!
Merry daylight savings to one and all.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
farewell, cadaver #1
Anatomy dissection was one of those things where you are so afraid of what it means, and when you are actually doing it, the blinders go on and you push it all away to do what needs to be done. And then in the end, you get a second to breathe again and you realize, you will never get an opportunity like that again in your life.
They gave us a body, so that we might learn, so that we might uncover the mysteries of the human form. This body yielded to us so much more.
We called him Bruce, as in Bruce Banner, because his musculature was so pronounced and hefty. His muscles shined pink and robust with formaldehyde like Christmas ham. He hardly smelled at all. When we arrive at his lower abdomen, he yielded us a great treasure of a massive direct hernia. We found a spleen bordering on splenomegaly, and gold teeth. I called him a pirate, a swashbuckler, an adventurer, climber of mountains, sailer of ships. He must have died in a short amount of time, because next to the emaciated, wasted bodies elsewhere in the dissecting room, his crevasses were overflowing with slippery fat, his body toned. When we got to his face, we marveled at how much he resembled Danny Devito. We were proud of our Bruce. He was good to us.
Though it may seem morbid to the outsider, it seemed only natural to derive our own narrative. Here were so many clues to where he came from and how he died. We would make up stories to try to fill in the crazy mad-libs of his body. How could we not wonder about what lay beyond, backwards into the time-space continuum? With so many secrets yielded, how could we not be curious about his story?
Some say there is a danger here, of objectifying the body, forgetting its human roots, disrespecting it by operating with a lack of gravitas, being too cavalier. In practice I found that the contrary was true: dissection only whet our appetites for the stories of our "patient," and for our future patients -- the narratives of human lives.
And in that I believe was Bruce's greatest gift to us. That despite the stress and deadlines and quizzes and tests, we never lose our sense of wonder.
Thank you, cadaver #1.
They gave us a body, so that we might learn, so that we might uncover the mysteries of the human form. This body yielded to us so much more.
We called him Bruce, as in Bruce Banner, because his musculature was so pronounced and hefty. His muscles shined pink and robust with formaldehyde like Christmas ham. He hardly smelled at all. When we arrive at his lower abdomen, he yielded us a great treasure of a massive direct hernia. We found a spleen bordering on splenomegaly, and gold teeth. I called him a pirate, a swashbuckler, an adventurer, climber of mountains, sailer of ships. He must have died in a short amount of time, because next to the emaciated, wasted bodies elsewhere in the dissecting room, his crevasses were overflowing with slippery fat, his body toned. When we got to his face, we marveled at how much he resembled Danny Devito. We were proud of our Bruce. He was good to us.
Though it may seem morbid to the outsider, it seemed only natural to derive our own narrative. Here were so many clues to where he came from and how he died. We would make up stories to try to fill in the crazy mad-libs of his body. How could we not wonder about what lay beyond, backwards into the time-space continuum? With so many secrets yielded, how could we not be curious about his story?
Some say there is a danger here, of objectifying the body, forgetting its human roots, disrespecting it by operating with a lack of gravitas, being too cavalier. In practice I found that the contrary was true: dissection only whet our appetites for the stories of our "patient," and for our future patients -- the narratives of human lives.
And in that I believe was Bruce's greatest gift to us. That despite the stress and deadlines and quizzes and tests, we never lose our sense of wonder.
Thank you, cadaver #1.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
gchat is ruining my life
things aren't so bad.
kpeng127: so.... how many genitals will we see in our life time?
kpeng127: so.... how many genitals will we see in our life time?
so embarassing.
me: oh wow
i never thought of it that way before
that's insane
kpeng127: yup.
yay doctors.
Adam: haha
Adam: haha
THATs a cool roomy
i was just watching a buffy episode (yeah yeah), about her roommate who is actually a demon
so i think youre doing ok
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
if the Hadron Collider creates a black hole and the universe as we know it ends today,
what would you do with your last few hours?
i would eat a butt-load of ice cream and dim sum and fatty foods.
i would call anyone special who was not in my life anymore and tell them i miss them and that i'm sorry.
i would would lay face-down in the grass to hug the earth and listen to the insects and worms and plants one last time.
hm.
i could do all these things...today.
....mm. donuts.
what would you do with your last few hours?
i would eat a butt-load of ice cream and dim sum and fatty foods.
i would call anyone special who was not in my life anymore and tell them i miss them and that i'm sorry.
i would would lay face-down in the grass to hug the earth and listen to the insects and worms and plants one last time.
hm.
i could do all these things...today.
....mm. donuts.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
famous last words
week 4.
our first major test as a class has come and gone. it feels like it has already been 6 months. it feels like my entire life is anatomy. i don't hate anatomy, but it's freakin dry and boring.
it seems like the extracurriculars are getting under way. we're constantly having our classroom occupied by informational sessions (well it comes with free lunch often so i'm not complaining). but there's hardly any room in the brain to think about them, much less plan on doing them.
i am pretty adamant in my decision to not devote my entire goddamn life to getting that 100% in anatomy. even though it's crucial to what i want to do later on as a physician, i feel as though i have such a tenuous hold on myself as a person that i refuse to alter some of my older habits in order to accommodate my studies, including making sure i read every article (title at the very least) of the front page of the news, finding stuff online that makes me laugh, and dancing. so no, i'm not studying as hard as my peers right now. but these are things that i really need to do.
i mean, i'm passing so far. it should be do-able. right?
(...the shadows under my eyes are twice as big as they were 4 weeks ago.)
our first major test as a class has come and gone. it feels like it has already been 6 months. it feels like my entire life is anatomy. i don't hate anatomy, but it's freakin dry and boring.
it seems like the extracurriculars are getting under way. we're constantly having our classroom occupied by informational sessions (well it comes with free lunch often so i'm not complaining). but there's hardly any room in the brain to think about them, much less plan on doing them.
i am pretty adamant in my decision to not devote my entire goddamn life to getting that 100% in anatomy. even though it's crucial to what i want to do later on as a physician, i feel as though i have such a tenuous hold on myself as a person that i refuse to alter some of my older habits in order to accommodate my studies, including making sure i read every article (title at the very least) of the front page of the news, finding stuff online that makes me laugh, and dancing. so no, i'm not studying as hard as my peers right now. but these are things that i really need to do.
i mean, i'm passing so far. it should be do-able. right?
(...the shadows under my eyes are twice as big as they were 4 weeks ago.)
Thursday, August 14, 2008
open heart surgery
this past week, one of my roommates and i agreed: it didn't really feel like medical school. the gravitas somehow got lost in the beginning.
it is coming upon the end of my first week of class and i think i am finally, maybe, 80% there. it is just hard to believe that someone like me could be inducted into such a sacred profession, and as i sat through Essentials of Clinical Medicine, i was overcome by memories of times i went above and beyond for a patient in clinic. of times i sold a patient short. of guilt and remorse for everything leading up to the person i am now, of pride and hope for the person i might become, of fear that i will end up failing out of school, or perhaps, failing later on. worry for those times i didn't cover my ass just out of plain laziness, and inspiration, that it may never happen again. fear of future lawsuits and M&Ms, hope for lives saved and jobs accomplished as best as humanly possible. powerpoint slide by slide flashed before the class, giving us a glimpse of the physician we would hopefully be trained to be, and it sunk in deeper and deeper -- my life from now on will never be the same.
to get to medical school, you need a concrete sense of who you are, your values and boundaries, your own lines drawn in the sand. they don't tell you that once you get there, you are still apt to change - nay, provided you aren't a completely insane hack, you WILL change.
you must.
it is coming upon the end of my first week of class and i think i am finally, maybe, 80% there. it is just hard to believe that someone like me could be inducted into such a sacred profession, and as i sat through Essentials of Clinical Medicine, i was overcome by memories of times i went above and beyond for a patient in clinic. of times i sold a patient short. of guilt and remorse for everything leading up to the person i am now, of pride and hope for the person i might become, of fear that i will end up failing out of school, or perhaps, failing later on. worry for those times i didn't cover my ass just out of plain laziness, and inspiration, that it may never happen again. fear of future lawsuits and M&Ms, hope for lives saved and jobs accomplished as best as humanly possible. powerpoint slide by slide flashed before the class, giving us a glimpse of the physician we would hopefully be trained to be, and it sunk in deeper and deeper -- my life from now on will never be the same.
to get to medical school, you need a concrete sense of who you are, your values and boundaries, your own lines drawn in the sand. they don't tell you that once you get there, you are still apt to change - nay, provided you aren't a completely insane hack, you WILL change.
you must.
Monday, August 11, 2008
a tad anticlimactic
even though i have an inhuman (haha) amount of anatomy to read up on,
there is no way i can't blog about my first day of med school!
hm.
......
yep. i fell asleep.
(i am sooooo stoked for tomorrow though. we get to start OP&P!!!)
there is no way i can't blog about my first day of med school!
hm.
......
yep. i fell asleep.
(i am sooooo stoked for tomorrow though. we get to start OP&P!!!)
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