Sunday, October 01, 2006

That Hurt a Little

Last couple of weeks have had me on the ropes. Seriously, if I just had about 8 more hours each day, I think I'd be just fine. I'm starting to settle into things but getting nowhere near comfortable. Here's a brief recap of notable events in the last couple of weeks:

My Family Tree Is Losing All Its Leaves
My Aunt Ruth, my grandmother's sister, died some days ago. She was 92 or 93 and had lived quite a full life but died rather suddenly and unexpectedly. Because of exams and such, I couldn't attend the funeral. Because Aunt Ruth had always lived in a different city, I never got to know her terribly well but I really liked her. She had a ridiculously adventurous spirit and was a feisty lady.

It was always fun and funny to see the two old sisters together. My grandmother, who everyone called 'Bamba,' was the younger sister. Ruth was the older sister that everyone sort of saw as the risque, fun-loving, free-spirited one. Put them together and you had fireworks.

A year or two before Bamba died, Aunt Ruth came for a visit. This was right around the time I proposed to my wife. Luckily, we had gone to visit everyone and share the good news. This was after Bamba's stroke, so she spoke in a gentle but hoarse whisper. Aunt Ruth, on the other hand, had not problem speaking loudly. Unfortunately, she was nearly deaf. So, you put them in the room and let them go. One could hear but not talk; the other couldn't hear a thing unless you were yelling but spoke quite loudly. After a few minutes, the two sisters were just laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it all.

When Bamba died a few years back, I gave the eulogy at her funeral. I consider what I said on that day to be one of my life's achievements. Afterward, Aunt Ruth found me at the grave site and thanked me for my words. As sad as I was in that moment, I felt even sadder for Ruth: she was the sole survivor among her siblings. I'm compelled to believe that, now, however, they're all reunited: laughing until they cry, getting louder and louder.

Exams and More Exams
Obviously, the exams of the last couple of weeks were paramount to almost everything. Seems everyone in the program is a little shell-shocked from it all. I'm reconsidering whether four simultaneous lab classes was really the best idea. Anywho, seems a little silly to bitch and complain about it. I'm trying to just think of it as a precursor to the strain of medical school. Yeah! That way, instead of thinking about it as "only several more weeks to the semester," I can really expand it to "only several more years of this shit." It really makes all the difference.

Fetal Pig Dissection
We started the fetal pig dissection a couple of weeks ago. The fact that I never had an anatomy class or did a thorough dissection makes this pretty cool. Our pig is a huge, well-developed, hairy female that my partner and I named "Butters." Honestly, dissection is pretty damned cool but awfully violent. It really takes a sort of detachment to step back from the object as a living thing and try to approach it scientifically. We've dissected several systems by now: digestive, reproductive, circulatory, respiratory, and excretory. The body is absolutely amazing. Considering how everything fits together and works is absolutely enthralling. I just wish that the damned preservative chemicals weren't so unpleasantly fragrant; they stick with you for hours. Butters really stinks.

One way to really alienate everyone in your lab class (including the instructor): announce that for Halloween, you're going to wear an apron made of fetal pigs. The reaction is classic.

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