The Cut of His Jib

I know what you're thinking. And yes, I agree. I have been slacking off in my self-proclaimed duty to provide you, my readers, with unparalleled joy and entertainment in an otherwise mundane world. Believe me, I understand the melancholy you have felt while sitting at your computer, day after day, hour after hour, staring hopelessly at an ever-unchanging screen as you lackadaisically hit the refresh button, again and again, over and over to no avail. And for this, I am sorry. I have failed you as of late in my prolonged literary absence. And yet, I returned to you today in order to make amends, to rectify this injustice and to attempt to once again instill in you the sense of wonder and exultation that is my everyday life.

...Unfortunately, since I have just used virtually all of my oh-so limited time in composing the preface to my story--which was, dare I say, the literary equivalent to a finely-aged cheese (or, better yet, a properly cooked tuna melt)--I am going to have the keep this brief. So, here is an abridged summary of the last few weeks of my life. I apologize to those of you who have spoken with me recently: much of this will probably be old news (so hopefully you all find reviews as necessary, if not titillating, as I do).

1.  Gross Imagining and Embryology, the first course of my medical career, came to an official end a few weeks back. I don't have too much else to say about this, though I would like to describe for you one final laboratory experience. As you will understand momentarily, failing to tell you this little anecdotal gem would be an absolute detriment to your personal well-being, an injustice for which I refuse be held accountable. As for those less fortunate individuals who, for whatever inexcusable reason, lack access to my blog, I can only pray that they take refuge in some other source of literary enlightenment.

...But again, I ramble. On to the story. 

So, following Disarticulated Head Day*, we continued with the horror-fest some call learning anatomy. Being the sane people that I know you all are, you are probably wondering what further abhorrent experiences they could possibly subject us to now that the cadaver's head was practically detached from the body. Well, sanity, it seems, is not a prerequisite for medicine. We were next tasked with exposing the nasal cavities via a "bisection of the head." ...Let me elaborate. For this dissection, we split the cadaver's face in two with our choice of, and I quote, "a butcher’s saw" (I can't make this stuff up) or "a short bone saw." Now, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using a butcher's saw, let me describe it for you. It pretty much looks and functions just the way that it sounds: like a freakin' meat cleaver with teeth.

After selecting our weapon of choice (my group decided to go Paul Bunion style with the simple bone saw), we proceeded to cut through the face. Now, when I say cut, I don't mean cut as in using your steak knife to slice up a tasty summer sausage (an activity much better likened to our genitalia dissection), I'm talkin' 'bout 2-man, back-n-forth, heave-ho, jeans and plaid, lumberjack style sawing. Except, you know, through a human face.

Then came our final laboratory exam. As I'm sure you can imagine, after the final few days of dissection, identifying facial structures was no easy task. What we were left with hardly looked like anything, let alone a human face. I wish I could find the words to adequately describe the sheer mess that we were left with on exam day. Suffice it to say that the first step of every structural identification involved trying to find some sort of discernible landmark--a nose, a tongue, perhaps some teeth, if you were lucky--and ultimately guessing at  how far the structure had been displaced from its proper place of origin.

And just like that, it was on to our next class: Cell Structure and Function (CSF)!

2.  Well, since my first story got a bit out of hand, I'll try to keep the rest of these brief. Thus far, CSF has been an interesting change of pace. This class (along with all of my medical school classes from here on out) necessitates a completely different style of studying, a change which has been somewhat difficult to get used to. The material is just SO different. Not to mention the teaching styles, and even the course layout. For the first two blocks, we mostly focus on histology--the microscopic study of tissue. Although the lecture material is pretty dry, the labs have been fairly interesting. We are learning to identify different tissue/cell types under the microscope, which essentially comes down to trying to differentiate between a pinkish-purple blob and a purplish-pink dot. Simple, eh?

3.  I got to play doctor during my first OSCE (Objective Structured Clinical Examination). OSCEs are once-a-term tests of clinical skills; they require us to take histories and perform physical examinations on various standardized patients. It's a pretty cool idea (they have an entire building setup for clinical practice and examinations), and was actually fairly fun, though one of my cases ended up going really poorly. I feel that we were not at all adequately prepared to deal with that particular case, so I'm still a bit frustrated about that. Oh well.

4.  I start my new preceptorship next Tuesday. This time I will be working with a neurologist. I'm pretty excited to get started and see what will come of it.

That's it for now. Updates will be posted as they (and I) become available. In the meantime, I hope that I have temporarily satiated your lust for my written word. Adieu!



*To clear up any undesired confusion, "Disarticulated Head Day" does not in fact refer to some obscure national holiday, but rather to a previous blog post about one of my stranger experiences to date (see "An Ode to H.P. Lovecraft").