February 27, 2011
anatomy test coming up on tuesday, which means that today (like all sundays before anatomy tests) was spent in the lab with my cadaver, George. he’s a 80-something year old man who died of metastasis to the brain, and after we opened him up, found he had lung cancer, prostate cancer, and a few abdominal aneurysms as well. but poor guy now is not quite “whole” as he used to be, what with missing most of his major organs and having his head sawed in two. (sorry if this is gruesome for you…i’m so used to it now it doesn’t even phase me). anyway, upcoming test is head and neck, which i have to say, is the part of the body i hate the most. there are way too many little things to look for, nerve and blood vessels that are thinner than a piece of thread. and too many bones. i hate the bones in the head. your nose is made of a bajillion of them. ugh…
but that aside, i do love being in lab with my probe and scalpel and dissecting away. its cool to start with something we know and see everyday, the exterior of our body, and dig, reflect, and clean things away until a whole new world is unearthed underneath. like how an entire system of arteries appears out of what looks like fat in the abdomen. or what looks like one big hunk of muscle actually splits in many smaller ones once you scrape away the stringy white stuff. its just so cool! and i know i’m a nerd. but i like standing there picking away at stuff until the structures we need to find are super-clear and pretty. its almost like art, i guess, but in a macabre sort of way. and i’m good at it, if i do say so myself. i like being meticulous. so i guess that’s why i want to be a surgeon. its just that a surgeon’s life (or lack thereof) is kind of off-putting…
