Saying goodbye

I'm sitting at DT-UT having a cappuccino, taking it easy and enjoying the end of Histo. Stacey's in Uganda this week working on an AIDS orphan project, and I don't really have a lot of work to do for tomorrow, so this is the perfect chance for me to get out of the Mt. Sinai area and do something different (and yes, going down to 2nd Ave and 84th St IS doing something different, since it seems that whenever exam time comes, I don't ever leave the 3 block radius around Sinai). I would probably be up to doing something even more exciting tonight, except that I'm recovering from a cold that I've had for the last few days, and fifteen blocks is about as much as I can muster right now.

Tonight we had a closure ceremony of sorts for our Anatomy class... even though Anatomy ended three months ago, this was the first time that was available for us to reflect on the experience we had in Anatomy and say goodbye to the cadavers we worked on all last semester. About half the class showed up for it, and it was a very solemn experience, with a number of people having some very sincere words to say about what the experience meant to them. Some people read poems or read things they had written about the experience, and others just spoke about what came to them. I hadn't planned on speaking, but when we were asked if anyone had anything to say, I decided to make a few comments about what I thought Anatomy had meant to me. I spoke about a conversation that I had had with Eric towards the end of the Anatomy class, where he had said that throughout his life, he had always been alright with being ignorant about the things that were inside the human body. After Anatomy, though, I think we all have a different appreciation for what makes up the human body, and may never see a person in the same way again, which in itself is pretty significant. After everyone who wanted to speak had spoken, we went into the Anatomy Lab and lit some candles while Patrick played a piece on his clarinet. It was a rather emotional moment, and a number of people were crying, or at least trying to hold back tears. I thought it was a very fitting end to a course that was a very significant part of the medical school experience. Truth be told, I think I might not have thought enough about the whole cadaveric donation process and what it all meant to the people who donated their bodies and their families, but in the end I am very glad that we learned Anatomy in the way we did. Anything less "hands-on" would have taken away from the full experience.

Tomorrow is the last day at our first set of ASM clinical sites, which have been been a really enlightening experience. I think the things that we are attempting to learn in ASM are only truly learned through the experience of interacting with patients, and so I've really appreciated the time that we're spent with Dr. Serlin. I know that we'll have plenty of time to do all of this ad nauseum in future years, but I think it's really important to get a sense of why we are all going through this process, even at this point.

I am also meeting with Dr. Zier tomorrow, the person in charge of medical student research projects. I'm trying to work something out with a professor who is doing health disparity work in the ER, but she hasn't gotten back to me yet, and I am hoping that Dr. Zier can help me out with setting something up. At this point, I'm starting to feel like I don't want to deal with the stress of setting up some grandiose summer project; instead, I'd just like it all to be figured out already. There have been too many extraneous things to think about so far this semester.

Tomorrow night I'm having a conference call for the AMSA program with Stephen Lewis, the UN envoy on HIV/AIDS. He worked at the Earth Institute while I was there, and I saw him speak a number of times. He's an absolutely phenomenal speaker, and I'm excited about getting the chance to speak with him. The topic is on women's health and HIV, and I think he'll have a lot of interesting things to say.

Alright, I think it's time for me to be heading home. I've got some Belize emails to send, and I want to get ready for my meeting with Dr. Zier tomorrow.