Six days and counting

Well folks, I've been so busy with anatomy that I forgot to write. For anyone who's interested, I'm in a relationship with a man named Frank Netter. We often sleep together and I have been caught drooling on him. He lets me study his anatomy day and night from many different positions. I like this guy! ;)

Anatomy, wow, I can't believe it's almost over! Only six more days with my crumbled cadaver, who currently looks like a marble Roman bust in Ephesus. Last Thursday, we took a hand saw and cut off through both humerus bones, while slicing through the well defined muscles of the upper arm, and through the rib cage, sternum, and intervetebral disc. Last week we hemi-sected the pelvis after sawing off both legs. A month ago, I would have thought this was inhumane, horrendous, awful, and plain wrong. However, I love my cadaver and he has taught me a lot. I've picked his butt fat, trimmed his fascia, defined and then sliced his muscles, hemi-sected his pelvis, castrated his penis, and now I'm dissecting tiny arteries and nerves that used to make this man smile and wink. Next week we'll hemi-sect the skull to dissect the tiny nuclei in the brain that make up the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

Today was especially interesting because we used wire cutters to snip bits of the mandible (jaw bone) and zygomatic bones off to expose the muscles, nerves, and arteries of mastication. The TMJ (temporamandibular joint) is a popular place for dislocations and it is obvious to see why when you pop it open in lab. Also, anomalies are awesome. Every body is unique and our teachers regularly point out the "cool" anomalies for other students to come look at. Our body has lots of these. On one hand, it's nice to have a unique body with a pelvic kidney (1 in 900), and on the other hand, it's annoying to study our cadaver when we are tested on the typical bodies and Netter's Atlas. At least our cadaver didn't have esophageal cancer for the torso test - that group was very unfortunate. I guess there will always be one part of everyone's cadaver that is different than the other eight cadavers in the lab. Oh well, c'est la vie.

On a side not, I'm looking forward to the Dedication Service where the med students plan a ceremony for the families of the bodies. I hear it is spectacular! Students perform on stage and produce a video documentary of students thanking the families for the tremendous contribution to medical education.

I'll write again soon, ciao

Katie

P.S. I'm super excited that I got into the Philips Neighborhood Clinic but then I was devastated to hear that it might be cut due to "financial difficulties." I'm reading Tracy Kidder's Mountains Beyond Mountains, again, and I hate how people say "Resources are always limited." It doesn't acknowledge how the resources had come to be limited in that given place, as if someone had imposed poverty there. However, resources are less limited now than before because medicine has the tools and treatments for preventing plagues and unnecessary suffering. How come the PNC is subject to "elimination" due to "resources" when it works out of a church basement, run by volunteer students, and serving a community that is desperate for affordable healthcare? I hope I get an opportunity to work there and make it a bigger and better place.