Tuesdays...Unfortunately NOT With Morrie

Tuesdays are the longest day of classes on our calendar by far, mostly because we always have lecture in the morning, a little lunch break, and then Anatomy lab. I have yet to decide if this is a good thing (as it is not Fridays, and we get it over with), or a bad thing (as perhaps getting it over on Monday, or even spreading it out a little over the week, could be nicer), yet, I do know that it is INSANELY tiring. There was a point today in our mini-lecture within a lab (that was on reading mammograms, which honestly look painful for a woman even on an Xray) that I actually caught myself with my eyes closed and thought, wow, maybe this is why I received like 4 Starbucks gift cards as gifts before attending medical school. Never really a coffee fan (alright, I pretty much hate the taste), I sort of hope this is not true, as  calorie wise, there are only a few occasions that it is OK to gorge on a morning moca.

Class today consisted of lectures on Biochemistry, Anatomy, and a clinical correlation for Cell Biology (or a sort of bench and clinical mixed lecture on the disease Listeria). Having previously dropped biochemistry...twice, part of me gets a little thrill out of every specific question asked, or term mentioned, that gets immediately shut down by our professor. She often responds with a little bit of a "I did not use those terms" or "that is WAY too much unnecessary detail to know", and being a first time viewer of this information I could not be happier every time she says it. It is as if a part of me is saying, "maybe this is the course you were meant to take...the Cliffs Notes, Board Specific Version of Biochem". Fast Forward (however fast about 40 slides in 50 minutes goes) to Anatomy, where we were taught about the Thorax, mostly the heart, in preparation for next week's lab. In my mind, our lecturer today received high marks because he opened with a hilariously random sexual joke, something completely unexpected, but something that received a good roar of "did he seriously just say that?!" laughs around the room. Lucky for me, this random jokeage continued throughout the lecture, and I thus was unable to zone out and completely miss all of the terms that usually get lost in space as my mind attempts to play connect-the-dots, or better yet, OPERATION, with them. Finally, we were given a lecture that SHOCKER, started off by explaining an actual patient's history and lab work, before we learned about the cell biology for this infectious disease, Listeria. For me, the entire time these professors spoke I kept secretly hoping the lecturer would break into song about Listeria, as my Infectious Disease professor in all her 80 year old goodness did in college, but still, it was nice to hear things about people for once. While I am sure that there will be a day that I will not beg to hear lab results and history information, in these years of classroom learning and basic science, I doubt this will ever happen.

Following class and before lab, we had a brief interlude (or as my classmates like to call it a FREE LUNCH), that described the Humanities in Medicine Program here. As someone clearly interested in writing, but also as a humanities major, a huge part of me smiled at the prospect of being able to find balance in my life, and schooling. Besides the speaker series, which apparently will give me an opportunity to meet and chat with some cool physician writers (I currently am most excited about Pauline Chen because her NYTimes pieces are much more laid back and narrative than most other writers), I am happy that I came here the year they are starting to offer a workshop/class on Scientific Writing, the kind of writing for the popular press, not for journal articles. As someone who has about 15 ideas in my head of things I would like to write about in this genre, but who has no clue where to start, I would say that this is right up my alley. I know what you are thinking...I am ACTUALLY thinking about taking an ELECTIVE after I made fun of everyone else for doing it...That is sort of hypocritical, no??! For this, I admit defeat, as they got me with the only class I would ever agree to take on top of everything else, one that I have never learned, one that I am interested in, one that is non-science, and one that I want to incorporate into my life and my future. I guess you could say that I'm a sucker for a good science popular press book and the opportunity to write one myself.

The long day ended with another afternoon in lab. As usual, this consisted of me donning my Anatomy attire: my black gator scrubs (Represent.), my newly cut at the bottom apron, my goggles that kept fogging up, and of course, my gloves. While usually getting dressed also involves some jokes from my classmates, as I often have trouble opening the "school-type" locks since I have not had a locker since 8th grade (thank you my room=my locker in boarding school), today, I mastered the art of turning past the second number. Lab itself was pretty unremarkable, though cool surgeries, as we did a mastectomy (removed the breast tissues, thoracotomy (inserted a chest tube), and removed the chest plate (basically took off the ribs to reveal the lungs underneath). It seemed like people were more confused in this lab than ever before, were frequently just deviating from the instructions and doing what they thought was right, and that yet again, despite being told otherwise, the majority of us went over 3 hours. The hardest part for me to wrap my head around was sawing off the bones of the rib (using an electric saw, not a hand saw). At first I refused to use the saw at all, as just the sound of the cracking bone (especially with the plier like tools at first), made me wince and sort of spazz out, in a nails on a chalkboard meets just plain uncomfortable way. Even though Orthopedic surgeons crack and saw bones all the time, it felt weird to be doing it on someone who was dead. However, despite ignoring him suggesting it basically every other second, I finally caved into my lab mate and grabbed the saw from him. Though I would never say it was satisfying to overcome this (and it was certainly not as satisfying as being the one in my group who rattled off correct, or close to correct, terms for muscles/veins/nerves when asked by one of our instructors), it was really nice when I looked around the room and realized that I was one of very few girls who were running the saw (what is it with boys and power tools?).  Maybe I will want to do some type of surgery after all....