Okay, so don't read the beginning of this post if you are squeamish, because I am about to go into a fair bit of detail about something rather uncomfortable to most people.
The Medicine, Health and Society class is going to visit the Med School 101 class at some point during this week, and I was one of the lucky half to go today. We went to see something called an "organ recital" where you hold a range of organs that are either from autopsies or from surgeries.
As we walked over to the hospital, I was steeling my nerves, as I had no idea what to expect. We walked into the classroom, where a silver rolling table with masses covered by blue towels was placed into the center of the room. On a shelf under the tables were boxes and boxes of gloves in a large range of sizes, which people were to grab before they sat down in the circle. The instructor, Esther, introduced herself and told us what she was going to be showing us today. We started off with a healthy pair of human lungs from an autopsy. When Esther held them up, I was surprised to see how dark and small they seemed to be, and sat there wondering if the person had ever smoked throughout their life. Apparently Esther was way ahead of us, and went into an explanation of how this was a healthy person during their life, but they were old, and dust and pollution had built up within their lungs.
Next we moved on to a set of lungs with emphysema, which looked radically different. They were smaller, and had small holes throughout them. After that, we moved onto a set of lungs with cancer, and there were tumors all over the tops of them, and in the part that was cut through the middle. Esther started that on one side of the circle, and a liver with cancer from the other side of the circle. It was sort of difficult to pass around since I had to trade organs with the person next to me since it reached our part in the circle at the same time. Finally, it was time for the leg. Unlike the organs, which were from autopsies, the leg was from a surgery. Apparently, the patient had diabetes, and lad to have their leg amputated since the blood was going septic. I could go into a great amount of detail about this leg, but I would rather not, as I think that would be kind of disturbing to read about. I could handle the organs without really being that affected by it, since I could view it without feeling a huge connection to it, but the leg made me feel sort of upset afterwards.
After the presentation was over, Zach led us around the outside of the hospital buildings, and then back into MHS. We watched part of a movie that centered around the different types of health care worldwide and compared them. I only really caught the end of the movie, since the part of the class that went to the organ recital came back rather late, so I can't really recount what happened. After lunch, we started the presentations about the drugs, but didn't get very far into them, so about ten people are going to be going tomorrow, including me. During study hall, we watched a documentary about how children are being overmedicated for childhood bipolar diseases and the adverse effects of that. Since most clinical trials on medications to treat bipolar disease are on adults, pediatricians are often flying blind when prescribing medications, and that often has terrible consequences.
After dinner I participated in the SOFT+ option of Monet For a Day, and attempted to paint. I decided to paint a quote from the Disney movie Up, along with a few balloons. I have only painted with watercolor before today, and I have found that painting with acrylic paint is exponentially more fun.
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| I think that if I have learned anything from this trip, it is this. |
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