My medical school class is 104 students small. I know approximately 99 of these students by name and consider all of them friends. We usually cross paths, me and one or two or three other students as we walk to campus each morning. If I don't join up with any friends on the neighborhood sidewalks, I usually greet a classmate at the bike racks outside of school. If I still haven't bumped into classmates (meaning that I am still reading my morning magazine, The Economist or National Geographic) as I enter the hospital, then I'm sure to join up with a handful of classmates getting their coffee or hot chocolate outside the student lounge. We converge every weekday morning at approximately 7:57 on the lecture hall indicated in our syllabus.
I spend most of my day with fellow students of medicine be it in lecture, lab, lunch, or small group. I study with med students outside of school, I eat dinner with friends from class, I go to movies or shows with med students. I play sports with other medical students. I'm not writing this thinking the reader is interested in knowing how I spend my am/pm hours. I am writing this to justify what I said at the dinner table Wednesday night.
Classes ended Wednesday at 12pm. I was on a plane two hours later bound for DC. Lil Sis picked me up and we cruised out to Poolesville for our first of many family dinners over this Thanksgiving break. The house as usual smelled incredible. Mom was near completion on some Indian soup masterpiece. It wasn't long before J & J arrived with the flat bread and away we ate. I don't know where the conversation was going (perhaps someone can chime in) but I enthusiastically announced, "Well, I was digging poop out of a cadaver this morning!" I realized, with the chorus of spoons clanking against the bowl that I just said something very, very disgusting. A split second later, the sound of the spoons dropping was replaced with moans of, "Ah, that is DISGUSTING...SICK...You just ruined everything, I can't believe you said that, that is DISGUSTING, I can't believe...!" All of the above accompanied of course with terrible looks of pain, anguish, and a pinch of anger.
I tried my best to recover, "Oh my, I'm sorry, I mean, I just made some precise incisions at various points along the small and large intestine to appreciate the differentiation of tissue & musculature...It's really not that gross, I mean, it wasn't like that...PROMISE, I'm sorry. Just looking at muscle..."
But the damage was done. There's no recovery from something like that. It rolled right off my tongue like it was common place, totally normal. Family holiday dinner conversation can get a little out of line but my family members were no where near prepared to handle something like that. I was honestly just as shocked as the rest of the family that I gave utterance to such a foul phrase. It took me a while to realize why I thought that was OK to say in the first place.
And now I realize: I'm always around med students. Our world of cadavers, histology, and physical exams is just that: our world. For better or worse, I am always around people who spend a couple hours a day dissecting, examining, and removing body parts from cadavers. What was at first overwhelming and taboo to us is now part of the daily grind. And it is only natural that my language reflect this new environment of medicine.
Declaring the above does not excuse me from respecting what is predictably and understandably disgusting to the rest of the world. I recognize this new language tendency has a time and a place. Please know that I will do my best to remember that; but if I do slip and say something that makes you feel a bit queasy, well, just take it as an invitation to join me in this new found world of mine.
4 comments:
It's like how I can never remember that not everyone else knows, in detail, what wh-islands are. Only grosser.
THIS is well written. Amen.
(Wait--I have something to say. I guess I can kind of get this kind of horrified response too, but only when I talk about my racier cases. My "raped and murdered two, killed four more execution-style" comments don't always go over huge. Like the other day when I looked at a notepad on my desk and it included words I never expected to write professionally (relating to a pretty horrific double-rape/murder), and I frantically thought, "Hey! Hide those!" So I did. Just so I wouldn't have to casually look at them. A little R-rated wordery in my peripheral is not my idea of a happy working space.
On the other hand, some stuff I do is boring. Um. I guess. Actually, I'm liking it right now. And so, with that, back to work I go. 1:59 am. I kid you not. Hi ho.)
You can't tuck away the R rated behavior that brought a patient into your Emergency Dept, but there are ways to eliminate the R wordery--I love that, by the way. We say things like GS, SW, for gun shots and stab wounds. They are not only easier to say, but they are also easier to say.
Way to bill those hours!
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