The Big Day

All year we have been avoiding and yet slowly marching towards certain sticky topics. In the fall, we started out politely studying bones and muscles, followed by the largely theoretical, intellectual study of the nervous system -- with an icky, Halloween-like brain lab thrown in. Then we got to renal, and GI, and learned to calmly discuss urination and defecation, even to palpate the colon and the rectum as tubes inside of our cadavers.

So although we are nearly done with dissection forever, tomorrow is The Big Day: dissection of the male pelvis, followed by the female pelvis next week. In preparation, today we were treated to a rather graphic, though entirely matter-of-fact, lecture on the pelvis and genitals, complete with cartoons as drawn from the viewpoint of a physician giving a pap smear. I was filled with admiration for our professor, who managed to set a tone that was entirely non-creepy, respectful, and informative. With the occasional ironic joke: "the anal triangle is filled with fat -- those of you doing dissection tomorrow will be able to appreciate that."

Tomorrow should be fine -- we've managed to get through every distasteful obstacle we've encountered thus far, and it's never as bad as the anticipation.