Guts and Round Robin Stress

Today was 'rounds'.  It was my turn to present our cadaver to the other groups.  Each group had five minutes with me and I showed them all that I knew about the corpse.  The focus wasn't on the entire body, it was over the abdominal cavity and it's contents.  More or less it was a presentation of the guts.

The presentation went pretty well.  I knew most of the specifics and answered questions somewhat intelligently.  When I didn't know something, I told them I didn't have the answer and moved onto stuff I did know.  Rounds are stressful because they force you to memorize the structures well enough to present it to the other groups.  Nobody wants to look stupid in front of their colleagues.  

The abdominal cavity is pretty nasty.  Our cadaver is quite messy still.  The celiac trunk was hidden within fatty, green mush.  It stinks too.  And to get to the posterior abdominal wall you have scoop up the intestines and move them over to the other side of the cavity.  You can't think too much when doing this because it looks kind of silly when grown men faint or vomit profusely when nobody else is.  Overall, I have had 3 solid weeks in the gross anatomy lab where I didn't feel overwhelmed at all.  There is only a few weeks left until finals which means NO MORE DISSECTIONS!  Thank God.

Today, there was a sense of exhaustion amongst our class.  People were yawning and deep dark circles surrounded the white of their eyes.  We are tired.  For the past few weeks our weekends have come and gone with literally no time to relax.  We worry about exams on Monday and spend endless amounts of time studying during Saturdays and Sundays to be ready and then sit all day in lecture halls trying to absorb all our instructors cram down our throats.  The lifestyle is one that would crack most people wide open and force them to think twice about the path.  It is brutal and only the strong survive.

You have to know damn well this is the profession you want to be in.  I know I am not alone when I say that I am not sure this is the best path for me.  I know others feel the effort might be too much for the scope of practice in the end.  Maybe not.  Maybe that is my opinion because I am exhausted and the grass is greener in unfamiliar territory.  It makes for good conversations and long thought provoking blog entries, nonetheless.

I will sign off and take a few moments to absorb some of the rare Oregon sunshine before crashing for the day.

Good night