Creepy Thoughts Caused by Anatomy

I'm feeling prolific today. It's because it's 4:38pm and I'm trying to study. I know I get antsy in the afternoon, and that makes it hard to study, but I try to anyway. And then I end up cranky because I stayed in all day, didn't do anything fun, and yet didn't get anything learned. I do best at night and in the late morning. Too bad class is at 8am, always at 8am. The American Disabilities Act people should look into Circadian Rhythm Discrimination for those of us who perform best at night, but are rather dull at other times of the day. So that is why I'm writing a lot today, instead of studying like I should be.

Anyway.

I creeped myself out the other day. I will tell you how, but first, let me give you a little background on my latest cadaver. After the Juicy Lady fiasco (see "Anatomy," 11/28/06) ended, our dissection groups were split up and we got different cadavers. My group got a big guy with a huge neck, the "linebacker" among the cadavers. After two hours of unsuccessful dissection, we were instructed to abort our body and join other groups. He just had too much subcutaneous fat and we couldn't find anything in there, barely one nerve, one vessel, even the muscles were hard to pick out. The other cadavers seemed like they just fell apart in nice, perfect layers for the other groups, and we were feeling pretty bad about our dissection techniques. The instructor told us not to get down on ourselves, and told me that even surgeons can get lost in a body if there is too much subcutaneous fat.

Now, back to creeping myself out. Once a week, we interview fake patients in small groups. The actors come to school, are told what ailments they are supposed to be portraying, and we interview them. Sometimes we do practice physical exams on them. Last week, we had a "patient" who actually had a heart murmur for us to listen to. He was a retired guy, in very good shape. He played sports for a few hours every day, and he was very fit. He was so fit, and lacking any fat, that I could just imagine how nicely his skin would peel off, how easily his vessels and nerves would emerge from the connective tissue, how cleanly his muscles would separate from their anchors. As he lay down on the exam table to let us listen to his heart, I nearly told him that he would make a great cadaver. I'm glad my social filter was on, because THAT would have come out all wrong. A few days later, I was looking at someone else's neck, and in my mind's eye I could see what was under the skin. I've never been a man before, but I understand men undress women in their minds all the time. It was kind of like that; I was "unskinning" a person while we were chatting! Now that's just weird. I'd heard of medical students suddenly realizing that when they looked around, they saw diseases and injuries, not people. I thought that was kind of hokey until I found myself mentally reflecting my conversation partner's skin to find facia, subcutaneous fat, the sternocleidomastoid muscle and the vessels of the vicinity.

I wonder if I will always see people that way, now that I know what things looks like under the skin? It's like the inside of a See's candy box: can you picture that box of chocolates ONLY in its closed state, or does the image of the little chocolates pop into your mind, because you know what it looks like inside that box? Once you know, you can't ignore what you know. The image pops up whether you try to conjure it or not. The only difference is that for some people, it's milk chocolate with a butterscotch filling, but now for me, it's muscles and fat and tissue. And that's just creepy.