Donor Memorial Service

Today I attended the Donor Memorial Service held by the second year class. Its purpose is to honor those that have given their bodies for our study. With few schools keeping true anatomy course with cadaver dissection, to belong to one that does is really quite fortunate. I don’t think I quite understood the magnitude of the gift given by these individuals at this time last year, but by the end of my first of study it was evident how much I had learned because of this resource available to me. This year I felt that there was definitely a need for me to be among my peers and with them say thank you to the families in attendance.

My role, since I can neither play piano nor sing in a choir (or alone for that matter), was that of a simple usher. Meet and greet the families as they come in, get them to sign the guestbook, and make sure they have a place to sit. Students were forced to sit (or stand) in the back row in order to give room for the families that had come out for the service. Quite a number of families had traveled to be at the service today, and had planned their weekend around being in attendance.

My peers continually impress me. The choir had two weeks to learn their songs, and the speakers not much longer to practice their parts. Even though this was the case, it sounded as though they had had much more time together and their performance came off as polished. I could see how it touched the families involved and I am thankful that there is such resounding talent in the group of students involved that they were able to do such a good job in such a short period of time. After the service was over, a small reception was held which allowed the students and families to mix.

At the reception I introduced myself to one young woman who was present. She was standing off to one side after the ceremony, not talking to anyone, and looking quite sad. I thanked her for coming out and asked what she though of the service. She began by thanking me for being involved and then explained that it was her Dad’s wishes to donate his body. He had, in life, suffered terrible spinal injuries and felt as though his body was useless. In some way by donating his body he felt as though he could be useful again. The short service, the small bit of gratitude by the students, had moved her greatly and it showed. I invited over one of the anatomy professors, a man that I have the utmost respect for, to talk to this young woman for a few moments. “It is the least we can do”, he said to her “It is our duty, our obligation, it is a small way to show what a wonderful gift your father has given – Thank-you.”

Article from New Yorker

Every now and again I come across an article that makes me laugh out loud, like this one from the latest New Yorker by Dave Sedaris. 

Icebowl 2006

It’s taken me a little while to recover from the weekend, as I think I may have left the majority of my electrolytes at Icebowl 2006, an intercollegiate hockey tournament held in Saskatoon over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It left me sleep deprived, dehydrated, bruised and battered. In short it was a great time.

There were definitely teams that came out to win, and those who were there simply to socialize. My team was a bit of a combination of both, which basically meant that we got absolutely demolished in the tourney. Regardless it was fun, and I’ll chalk it up as one of the best weekends I’ve had in school so far.  

clinical skills post#1

Today I had a clinical skills class. Now the purpose of these classes is to provide the medical students with some experience in clinical assessment, i.e. history taking and physical exam techniques. We’ve been through three of these classes so far this year, and given that the current block of study is the gastrointestinal system, the focus was on the gastrointestinal tract.

The patient that we saw this time was a 62 year old gentleman who had a previous history of diarrhea with urgency, and was subsequently diagnosed three months ago with rectal cancer. He was in the hospital currently recovering from a resection of the tumor following three months of chemo and radiation therapy. Aside from what looked to be some irritation of his incision, he was in good spirits.

First let me say that it always a pleasure to talk to patients, at least it is at this point in my medical career. This is, no doubt, because they are screened beforehand. So those patients that are cranky, hard to deal with or generally out of sorts I never have to deal with. Or rather, I haven’t had to deal with them yet. I am sheltered and thankful for it. The patient that I talked to today fit that bill – he was friendly and talkative even after spending the last number of months dealing with a horrible debilitating disease.

I was struck by the fact that the patient though lucid and talkative knew relatively little of what had happened to him. He knew generally of disease, he knew that the cancer had been removed and he knew that he had been on chemo / radiation therapy but he didn’t know the details. He didn’t know what the drugs were that he had taken, he didn’t quite know why he had had treatment for cancer before the cancer was removed and he didn’t know exactly what had been done on the surgical side, or how it would affect his ability to go to the bathroom (in the future). It’s interesting to see what the patient, an articulate and intelligent man in this case, was concerned with and what was secondary in his mind.

Getting started

I have wanted to do this for some time…and now that I’m in front of my computer screen my mind is blank. The idea of starting a blog has been there for some time. It just needed to be realized. Now that it is reality I’m looking forward to exploring this strange new world.