Knowledge is a terrifying thing, as I have come to discover after just 2 years of medicine. Physiology and anatomy have irreversibly warped my perception of the world; I simply cannot untie medicine from simple, everyday observations. It began with subconscious rumblings along the lines of “Oh, that reminds me of (insert anatomy/physiology here).” No biggie, I thought. Fairly normal and inconspicuous.
But I was wrong… This habit quickly metastasized into some twisted, chronic association complex:
-I have a tendency to cautiously dissect the skin and flesh of my fried chicken drumstick so as to identify the muscle groups, nerves and vessels.
-Crackling of knuckles = Zomg crepitus; osteoarthritis alert.
-A vaguely, M-shaped twig on the pavement will draw my mind to the brachial plexus.
-Tripping carelessly over uneven ground = Shit, cerebellar lesion.
- As my tummy rumbles, I wonder if starvation-induced gluconeogenesis from amino acids has begun. (Maybe that’s why I’m skinny.)
- Thinking about the micturition and defecation reflexes when I… you get the drift.
The point is, I think my brain has been rewired to live and breathe medicine. Then again, who can blame us? The study load is dishevelling and a large bulk of the material is directly applicable to everyday bodily functions. If anything, I believe a medical student (or as a matter of fact, any student) who does not go through this phase at least once in their academic journey should be viewed with unrelenting scepticism and incredulity. Or I might just be the only one who's going crazy. Yea, probably the latter.
This morbid obsession with medicine is not without its perks though; this continual (albeit unwelcomed) reinforcement of concepts does help to drill them snugly in my memory, and with over 4 years of undergraduate learning (and goodness knows how many years of postgraduate training) to go, I’ll need all the help I can get.
One thing bothers me though; my worldview has been markedly de-romanticized by anatomy... because if a hot girl exclaims “I love you with all my heart” right to my face, I can’t help but to hold some reservations about her honesty. Afterall, how can a 4-chambered sac of muscle ‘love’?
More fun awaits when you start doing psychiatry and you start diagnosing personality disorder in everyone around you. :)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteStudying anatomy and physiology right now definitely makes us start thinking that! We keep telling our non-biomed friends "if you want to dislocate your enemy's shoulder, just run into from the front them when their arms are abducted, and they'll dislocate their shoulder joint anterio-inferiorly." or "stab your enemy in the groin, their femoral artery, vein and nerves are there. confirm die"
ReplyDelete...yeah, so we're teaching our friends how to seriously hurt/kill people. But hey them lecturers are teaching us these things! :p
Push aside the morbid things (yes, please do, I'm an innocent girl, I am (: ), the anatomical terms does spring to mind on an every day basis- from brachial plexus to the flexor muscles that are working on our forearms when we're writing in lectures, to dermatomes, to ahh, goodness everything.
Plus, Microbiology doesn't help when we've constantly thinking "dude, you should not be eating that refrigerated rice, you might be ingesting pre-made toxins made by Bacillus cereus."
so yeah...learning science doesn't help much in the "what you don't know won't hurt you" category, but it sure heck is fun!
(3am here, and I'm reading your blog as I just finished studying for the day. Good luck for the exams Youngers!)
<3