Hmm, well the big day is here. I saw a partial dissection today. it was kinda eery walking into the lecture hall and seeing a body bag at the front. I didn't realize just how much I have been dreading today. I know I've been joking about it...making rather off color comments, but I guess that was just me trying to cope with what is a very discomforting situation for me. it seems a natural thing for anybody to be a bit unsettled at the prospect of A) working with a dead body and B) cutting it open and looking and working inside. However, when you talk about MED students the same does not seem to apply. Is there something about acceptance into medical school that shuts off that human part of you that says "this is not right"? It shouldn't be a natural or ok thing to be comfortable with this, should it? why was I the only one in my group that voiced any sort of discomfort at the prospect of cutting open a fellow human being? Of all the professions out there, shouldn't doctors be the ones who are just a bit squeamish about the notion of digging around a dead stranger's body. I suppose the day will come (3 hrs and counting) that I will have to deal with my cadaver. My nameless man who died of a heart attack two years ago. and in a year I will meet his family and bury him with them- what can i say to them? I will at that point know their father/brother/son more intimately than any of them ever will. I will have seen the myopathy that killed him and the brain the housed the mind of the man he once was. My fellow students tell me that all that is needed is detachment. But is that right? If I view him as 'it' and a person as just a body.....years down the road will the woman in room five just be woman with a kidney stone or Mrs. X with 3 kids a loving husband who is a woman recovering/dealing with an illness which has just interupted her life. WHat kind of doctor will I be if I detach myself and objectify he who is essentially my very first patient that I will have an opportunity to actually work with? I guess on top of all this, what makes me the most uncomfortable is the 'in-you-face' reality of death that must be dealt with tomorrow. Not someday soon. not when i'm older, but tomorrow and everyday afterwards. It's not comfortable facing your mortality. I suppose security might be found in beliefs in the afterlife...but that aside, death is still death and believing in something afterwards doesn't change that for me. hmm...anyways, to anyone reading this, sorry for being such a depressing blogger. what a shift from the last entry, aye? maybe I'm bipolar..hmm....either that or it's that simian line on my palm that's causing this :) I'd like to know what u guys think though....email me if the little comments box doesn't give u space :) lat11@cwru.edu
take care...
¶ 21:16