Katie, my daughter who featured in yesterday's post, has been telling us about her first year in medical school. They have been working on the body of a 92-year-old woman all year. Before they got the body, they received a talk on what a gift this woman had given them by donating her body to science. They don't tell the students who she is, but instead try to create a sense of respect and gratitude for what this woman had done for them. I thought it was beautiful that the woman who died lived on because she became a tool to teach the young. When they finish with her, she has a funeral that the medical students can attend. This means a lot to me since my mother has given her body to medical science also and will be dissected by students in Tennessee.
Katie said midway through the year, they came into the dissecting room only to find the old woman's head had been cut off! That was a bit of a shock, she said, then discovered it had gone to second-year medical students. The first years only do the body.
Yesterday Katie attended one of her last lectures for the year on men's genitalia. She said the Islamic women in the class walked out as (she assumes) that subject is forbidden to them. What are they going to do when a man and his genitalia come in for treatment when they are fully fledged doctors?
PS
Katie is using some pretty big words these days. Yesterday she was talking about "micturation." Anybody know what that means?
Here are a few more:
purpura
emesis
syncope
oliguria
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Tales of medical school
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8 comments:
I bet there aren't many men who come in for treatment without their genitalia. So presumably these women will have to limit themselves to accepting only female patients. Otherwise you could just imagine horrible scenes ...
Man: "I'd like an appointment to see a doctor, please".
Receptionist:"Does it involve your genitals, at all, sir?"
Purpura: The secondary color you get when you mix equal parts red and blue.
Emesis: A woman a man meets online, with whom he is having a cyber-affair. His lawful "mesis" don't know about it.
Syncope: a way of dealing with one's guilt over misdeeds, involving about equal parts of rationalization, denial, and hot bubble baths.
Oliguria: What Ligurians cry out when they return to their native region of Italy, on the northwest coast.
Micturation: Man, I got no clue. It does not sound nice to do in polite company, though---maybe it means to pick one's teeth?
Katie, help us!
I'm thinking that King's College is fixin' to hatch a big crop of lady Islamic gynecologists...I suppose that'd be about the only specialty that would safely exclude manly bits?
Purpura - an innocent chrysalis
Emesis - the enemy who will never defeat you
Syncope - someone who can just about tolerate Scott Joplin
Oliguria - a country ruled by only a few people
Micturation - I know this one, but only because Katie told me!
Ok, I'm going to be a big downer here with my radical ideas, but this is a perfect example of how medical "science" works really hard to create a mystique surrounding the often very empirical rather than terribly enlightened or knowledgeable practice of medicine.
All of these are everyday concepts with which we are already familiar, and for which there are plain english words that adequately convey their meaning (with the exception of oliguria).
There's nothing important being learned in learning these words, except to intentionally discriminate the user from others, and to give the appearance of authority to outsiders. It's nothing but affectation. There are better things to teach medical students than vernacular that intentionally excludes their patients.
And this coming from someone who has taken a helluva lot of classes at a med school.
P.S. Lest anyone misunderstand, there is nothing in here directed at Katie - this is a tiny part of a much larger critique of the medical establishment.
Emisis means vomit (related to emissions, I reckon). Sending forth, shall we say. For some reason my husband likes to eat grapes from an emisis dish.
Let me enlighten you!
Micturition - Urination
Purpura - type of bruising
Emesis - vomiting
Syncope - faint
Oliguria - decreased production of urine
"I bet there aren't many men who come in for treatment without their genitalia." This cracked me up! Thanks for my best laugh of the day. Also I loved all these comments. thanks for taking the time. x
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