Tuesday, February 4, 2003.
OPPOSITE SIDE OF NORMAL
SENIOR RESIDENT: "So what conditions can show as low-voltage on the EKG?"3rd YEAR MEDSTUDENT: "Um … hmm … psshh … I know this one … mmm, situs inversus?"
On a list of five likely causes of "low voltage on EKG", "situs inversus" would have been somewhere around Number Twenty, right after "low batteries." But it was still correct.
Situs inversus is a condition in which you are born with all of your organs on the opposite side of normal. Heart on the right instead of left. Liver on the left instead of right. I wonder if males have slightly lower right testicles instead of left ones.
ME: "I remember when I was a medstudent, there was a cadaver in our anatomy lab with situs inversus. I wonder if the team that studied off of it still listens for the heart on the right?"
(Even if they did, they could still become orthopedic surgeons. Sorry, just teasing the bone-busters with a little "bad humour" there.)
I'm the attending on the team. The teacher, guide, big boss. Mostly I just try to keep everyone awake with (self-)amusing anecdotes. This often leads to tangents.
NO JUNIOR MINTS ALLOWED IN THE ANATOMY LAB
SENIOR: "I hated anatomy. Just disgusting."
ME: "The formaldehyde fumes would burn my eyes. Every time I put my face in the abdominal cavity, I'd start tearing up. Once we got past removing all the skin, I couldn't see a thing. I was so pissed."
The other time my eyes betrayed me was in high school swim class. All of those girls I would systematically have crushes on at some point wearing their clingy one-piece algae-green swimsuits. And I was the only person in the pool who couldn't see any of them. (No contact lenses then.) The two times in my life I really wanted to see what was going on, and I couldn't.
INTERN: "Crying? Never heard that effect before. You know, formaldehyde is actually an appetite stimulant."
3rd YEAR STUDENT: "Maybe that's why pathologists are always eating in the morgue, haha!"
INTERN: "Seriously. That and the fact that anatomy lab was like 1 to 5 p.m. in the afternoon. Who wouldn't be starving after dissecting on an empty stomach all afternoon?" (No pun intended.)
Sounds like some twisted Pavlovian cannibal training experiment.
There are an uncomfortable number of disease signs and diagnoses named after food. Nutmet liver (chronic congested liver). Currant jelly sputum (in Klebsiella pneumonia). Strawberry cervix (in chlamydia). Bread-and-butter pericarditis (in rheumatic heart disease). Tea-colored urine (hematuria). Not to mention the number of times some pathologists will say things like "a soufflé of pus," or "honey-crusted boils," et cetera. Excuse me, would you have any Grey Poupon diarrhea on you?
And don't get me started on the number of times the phrase "It looks kind of pus-sy" comes up with infected wounds. (Pronounced like "pus" with a "y" at the end. Not like "wish Amy would give me some of that" with an exclamation mark at the end.)
SENIOR: "And why are anatomy professors so … dirty? One prof had this watch that would slide down his hand every time he dissected. His watch would be INSIDE the cadaver half the time, and he didn't like using gloves."
ALL OF US: "No way! Ewwww."
SENIOR: "And then we had this one with long hair and a big bushy beard, and whenever he would lean too far to look at our dissection, things would get stuck in his …."
ALL OF US: "Acckkkkk!!"
My head anatomy professor was a reverent, white-haired thin man with thin rimmed glasses. He believed in God and evolution; as in, God created evolution and everything else along the way. He wrote the book I still have, "Essentials of Human Anatomy (by Woodburne and Burkel - he was Burkel). We pretty much considered him god of the anatomy department.
3rd YEAR STUDENT: "Remember disattaching the leg? The table next to us just couldn't cut through it and had to break it off like a wishbone. Heh."
SENIOR: "Ew. That's gotta mess you up somehow."
ME: "I remember telling my mom NOT to donate her body to science, after anatomy lab started. It just seemed a little ... disrespectful sometimes."
INTERN: "But it's for science."
SENIOR: "But not your MOM!"
THE SUBCONSCIOUS BONE IS CONNECTED TO THE CONSCIOUS BONE1992. Medical school.
Every afternoon, it was ten teams of four students. With ten half-open cadavers on ten shiny metal tables with drains in the center of them. Large plastic containers for discarded internal organs here. Brains go in this bag. Place disattached arms and legs in this pile -- Dude, where's my arm?
Every cadaver was given a name by their team. We called ours, "Lilith." She looked pale and skinny, and waxy like she was under water but not quite bloated. The next table with the fat one was named "Norm." This was a place where everyone knew their names.
You can imagine how fascinated some people were about anatomy class. Like me. At least, until I was pushed out of the way by the Type A surgeon-wannabee in our group. Until my eyes started stinging. Until the hunger pains and formaldehyde made me nauseous. Until I found myself laughing at awful jokes that I would never actually utter aloud myself (but I'd happily type out for you if I hadn't blocked them out).
The dark humor would cut the macabre tension like a scalpel through cobweb-like muscle fascia. Body switches. Fencing matches with limbs. Okay, who put the Snoopy figure in our left ventricle? Very funny guys, seriously now, where's our arm?
Then there were other people, the ones who hated anatomy class. Were they too delicate? Did they see a resemblance to their grandparents? Their mother, or father?
Someone always faints on the first day. Don't be that guy (or girl). You'll never hear the end of it for the next four years. Someone will often refuse to have anything to do with the cadavers. That's where the surgeon-wannabees would come in useful and hack up the slack. Watch your fingers.
I was somewhere in the middle I guess. I wanted to dissect more, but after several minutes of separating the web-like fascia from the chicken-meat forearm flexors from the spaghetti nerves from the barely-salvaged veins, I'd have to step back for a while and let my eyes dry. Weeping like a baby. Blinded by science. Having to re-explain to people that I was not some oversensitive wuss "crying" because of the horror. It was the formaldehyde. It was. NO, I am not sensitive in that Alan Alda way.
Give me a chainsaw and I'll show you sensitive.
FINE YOUNG HANNIBALSINTERN: "I don't know why, but when I got to use the bonesaw to cut open the cranium, I couldn't help smiling. It was just so simple and fun. I didn't even realize the entire class was staring at me the whole time."
SENIOR: "That's weird. Just being a doctor is weird. It's not like we can tell people half of this stuff."
ME: "R-right, of course not. Do you guys still have your greasy anatomy books?"
INTERN: "I sold mine. It stank."
SENIOR: "I threw mine away."
I saved mine and put pictures of it on my website? (Maybe another day.)
SENIOR: "You ever think how bizarre our lives are? Handling a box of someone's bones in your room at night. Studying a real person's skull every night in your bed. How it would look if a police car searched our cars and found all that?"
(She neglected to mention how opened skulls make nice change holders, or using arm bones as back-scratchers. Sorry, at least I thought it was kind of humerus.)
INTERN: "They caught a janitor who stole a plastinated hand from our lab. He also had boxes of stolen bones and skulls in his car."
ALL OF US: "Freak."
THREE THINGS WE HATE ABOUT CPRsAnother day.
SENIOR: "You know what I really hate about CPRs? When the person you're coding is wearing nail polish."
ME: "Because it screws up the pulse oximeter (finger meter)?"
SENIOR: "Not that, it … it's just …. Like when they're wearing cute little bows in their hair that they just got done in the Day Room, and then you're pounding on their chest for twenty minutes."
ME: "It reminds you."
SENIOR: "Yeah."
ME: "Like little stuffed animals lying around the bed."
SENIOR: "Yeah."
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AMY'S ADDENDUM
Bug a boo. I love you.
[Amy typed that while I was away, apparently. I decided to leave it here.]
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MEDEA SIN HOT MODEL
Today's hot model is, as you can see by her sign, a reluctant and modest one.
DONNA recently attended a Corean festival in Hawaii and sent me this incredibly informative CD-ROM packed with all things Corean. In response, I asked her for even more stuff - like her picture for me to post here.
The lovely and alluring Donna is as enthusiastic and proud of her Okinawan heritage as any Corean with a Letter-C-fetish out there can be. From her, I learned that Okinawan culture and people are very different from Japanese culture and people (and more than just the setting for The Karate Kid).
In fact a lot of Okinawan history is similar to Corean history, in that both people were invaded and occupied by Imperial Japan, especially during World War II. In both cases, the language and culture of the invaded countries were forbidden by Japan, nearly to the point of cultural extinction. Only in Okinawa's case, many of their people still speak only Japanese. It's almost like the parallel universe of what Corea almost became. (More Okinawan discussion from this old board about a year ago.)
So, thank you for the thoughtful CD, Donna. And the yummy pictures of your definitely-hot self (and the beautiful pictures on your site). And for your wonderful journal as well. And I really appreciate the red in your photo up there too.
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Clarification: If you want to be a Medea Sin Hot Model, you do not have to buy a T-shirt. Just a picture with a post-it showing me the love would be great. (You do not have to be a girl or Asian either, silly.) Cafepress T-shirts can be requested with any drawing of mine on the front or any drawing/text (saying anything you want) on the back. Just email me and I'll make it.
