Friday the 13th

Fortunately and unfortunately, nothing really crazy happened to me today with all the superstitious hype around Friday the 13th. With med school so far, friday has been the toughest day for me every week. I'm worn out from all the lectures during the week and the hardest thing to do is stay awake at my 1pm anatomy lecture before heading into anatomy lab (mind you it's right after lunch too). Things got more interesting today as Dr. Krebbs pulled out the 3-D glasses to help orient ourselves with the pelvis. I'm glad she did that for us and most importantly, it kept me awake. Dr. Krebbs is a very nice lady and I always walk past her outside class, but I've never said hi to her yet. I made a promise to myself today I would say hi to her the next time I see her in the hallways.

Two weeks ago, in our anatomy lab, we were dissecting the foregut of the GI tract. Our cadaver had some serious surgery done in this area and the standard anatomy was totally messed up. Neither Dr. Vogl, Doroudi or Krebs could figure out what was happening. The greater omentum was missing, the stomach was extremely small and out of place and it seemed like the duodenum was surgically redone to connect with the large intestine and then loop back to the small intestine (absolutely not normal). We were totally confused and the whole team was quite fustrated. Our team decided to abandon our cadaver as we thought it wouldn't be beneficial to our learning, missing landmarks that other teams were able to uncover in proper sequence. Dr. Krebbs found me and pulled me aside to tell me that our team should not have abandonned our cadaver. She emphasized what a great learning opportunity our cadaver was and insisted that I go back. I couldn't find any of the team, so I just went at it myself the rest of the lab. And you know what, she was right. I think I learned more that lab than any other lab I've done so far by developing a deeper sense of respect and gratitude for the person who donated their body for my learning. What a great learning opportunity. I will never forget what Dr. Krebbs told me that day. And it is for this reason that I admire Dr. Krebbs so much now. I admire her for the deep respect that she has managed to re-waken in me after all these labs.