I’ve been back at school for a week, and I feel as though medical school plucked me up by the scruff of my neck and set me down on a treadmill spinning at 60mph! Needless to say, I don’t have much time to post a blog entry, but I can’t let this important week go by without writing a word about it.
My first day back was a blur of picking up gloves, scrubs, and realizing the amount of homework I was being assigned in my first week. Then 24 hours later, I met “Priscilla,” my cadaver, along with my group of 5 other students. We unzipped the bag, I felt as though we were having a birth. Boy or girl? The first thing I noticed were the bright pink fingernails! I confess I was hoping for a girl, and I got my wish. I wanted to spend more time with body like mine because as I meet Priscilla, I am imagining myself. She’s much older of course- she was 82 when she died. But she’s small and extremely thin. Her arms and skin remind me of my grandmother’s arms, and I can easily imagine her being alive.
Other people have commented about the smell or the “grossness” of anatomy lab. But the smell isn’t as strong as I imagined, and doesn’t linger as I was told it might. Looking at her body isn’t that gross either. It’s not scary- I can promise that because I haven’t had any dreams about her, and I always have bad dreams when I’m scared. In fact, Priscilla just amazes me- maybe because I have never seen a dead person before, or maybe because I haven’t been so close to many bodies before. When I’m standing there with her, I want to explore her, and each part is a surprise. Her back has a decubitis ulcer (bed sore) on it, which means she was confined to a bed during the end of her life. Her muscles are thin, and we’ve found aneurisms in her arteries which look a bit like beads on a string. Our information sheet says she died of a head injury from falling, but I wonder how this frail, bed-confined woman fell?
We’ve started with the thighs and legs, which have fairly large muscles, veins, arteries, and nerves. The insides look as I imagined with one exception- the amount of different muscles working in correlation with one another. I always thought of my butt and thigh as being composed of some large muscles. Actually there are many muscles working together like many different strings side-by-side. The muscle tissue is beautiful- red lines fading to white tendons. The tendon is luminescent. The muscles on her left side are deeper red-colored, while her right side is a light shade of pink. We’re not sure why. She and I will spend a lot of time together this semester- and somehow the time flies when I’m with her.
As if meeting my first dead body weren’t enough, I also had my first week of mentorship in a family medicine clinic AND I learned how to draw blood! I took a patient history for the first time alone, and presented it as personally as possible (because I feel awkward when patients are presented as if they are a scientific object who isn’t listening). I saw pap-smears, colposcopies (a small biopsy of the cervix performed when the pap-smear is not normal), a broken/ healing finger, a chronic cough, etc. The doctor was a wonderful teacher and warm physician. She gave me more explanations and attention than any doctor I have ever been around before.
With the patients’ permission, she let me look at the cervixes with the special binoculars, and I found it so fascinating that I wished I could project the image back to the patient to show them their own cervix. Maybe some people would find that disturbing or weird, but I thought the cervix was breathtaking up close, and I wished there was some way I could see my own. Also, I couldn’t imagine going through the discomfort of a colposcopy procedure without being able to understand why. Once I got a glimpse at the abnormal tissue, I could see the reason, but the patients did not get the chance to see. This seemed unfair.
Drawing blood wasn’t too difficult either, although I really could use 3 hands! Balancing the tubes, and popping them in and out without letting them fall… all while holding a steady needle without moving it 1mm. It’s tricky business. I thought the most difficult part would be finding the vein, but I learned to find the veins by using the elastic band, and going inside seemed easy. Hopefully with time, my 2 hands will suffice.
That’s my first week back… with lots of firsts. I find myself excited as next week approaches. I am exhausted, but thinking about Priscilla and the clinic give me a lot of energy.
Posted by Liz 
