08/14/2004 02:03 -0500 GMT

Anatomy Consumption

Well I would like to write about something other than anatomy, but I am infected with the desire to memorize all relationships with all structural entities. What that means is that while riding down University boulevard, in the passenger seat of classmate Jody Mark's new Ford 4x4, gripping the handle as the air conditioner kicked in, we joked about how University turns into Greensprings, and how analogously the subclavian artery turns into the axillary artery, and just distal to where interstate 65 is superior to Greensprings is where one finds the garage where my car is. Jody added that we could make a system of memorization where we drive home and every intersection would be a reminder of a different arterial or nervous pathway. We've got the anatomy bug in a bad way.

I left the anatomy lab this evening at around 11:00 pm, and when I left there were two groups still there, studying different aspects of arterial supply, nervous supply and musculature for the back, the arm, and points in between. Anup, Seine, Eyeball and someone else were hovered over their cadaver while Roshi and another woman had just finished reviewing the first 40 or so terms we are required to know form a list of about 320.

The human body is a truly amazing organism; there are so many detailed complexities that make a hand able to grasp an object, yet it is simple also. Skin covers tissue that covers deeper muscles. The muscles are fed by arteries that carry nourishment. The muscles also receive commands from our nervous system, in a marriage of electricity, kinetics, and functionality. All of this lays down on a structure of bony mass that permits me to run my fingers through my hair, type these letters on keyboard, and sit semi-crouched in front of a table, balancing on my matakos and my heels. It's simple, in that there are bones, muscles, nerves, and arteries (and veins returning the used up nutrients) making all this happen, but it's also complex in that the coordination of at least 50 muscles, with their counterpart accoutrements permit these everyday events.

All in all, I am studying very hard, and I'm enjoying learning how it all falls together to make a body work.

In high school I remember learning some biology and other sciences, and always being left with questions. For example, how deep is the inner ear? does it rest just an inch or so inside one's noggin? Or does it really recess deep into the head? I don't know the answer to this, but the medical school training is so cool in that if I wonder about a certain detail, like the depth of the inner ear, these textbooks have already wondered about it, and I can find and read about the answer, and then, with the benefit of donated cadavers, actually visualize my answers. For example, yesterday evening I wondered about the way the suprascapular nerve tracks over the scapula to get to the muscles that it innervates. Does it go above or under the suprascapular ligament, which traverses the suprscapular notch just lateral to where the superior margin of the scapula ends and the acromion and coracoid process both begin.  (For those who understandably just lost interest, please skip down to the next paragraph.) So I studied the nerve, and I thought about the muscles that it innervates (supraspinatus and infraspinatus), and the parent nerve from which it emerges (the superior trunk of the brachial plexus, which is constituted of cranial nerve ventral roots C5 and C6), and I visualized the path that it followed to arrive at it's destination. I also thought about the spinatus muscles, and what they do (abduct the upper arm and permit lateral rotation of the Humerus), and I imagined what defects one might encounter if that nerve were cut and one suffered paralysis as a result (inability to abduct the arm for the first 15 degrees, and inability to rotate the arm laterally).

This is my current life as an anatomist. Let's move on.

Looking a little deeper, I recall the advice of a wise man, Kayvon Mojjarat. He said, in response to my query of advice on how to be a successful medical student, "Don't let [medicine] consume you." I can see, now in retrospect, that this last week has been a consumptive, gluttonous, hedonistic (in a way) feast of anatomical consumption. I've reached a point where little else occupies my mind for any significant amount of time.

I think this is wrong.

Yet this is the way of the young Jedi who wish to learn the art and science of medicine. This is the way of learning how to practice the healing arts that will improve the lives of those around me. So as the consumption takes it's toll, so does a new body of knowledge replace my previous being, making me into at competent, rational, understanding physician.

I can only smile at all this, and relish the place I'm in, and enjoy it, and learn all I can, dedicate the parts of me that are available, maintain my soul in the mean time, and follow Kayvon's advice, to not let it consume me, but to still take the parts that are valuable, add them to my repertoire, and take care of some folks.