Right before this semester began, I was so excited to start my third year and just can’t wait to bury myself in all the clinical things we are going to learn this year.
Well, reality is always a little different than what we expect it to be. We have advanced surgery classes this semester and there are several dozens of pages we are required to read before each topic. I felt like I was studying anatomy and physiology all over again when I was reading those materials. However, when I got to some of the pages, it literally changed my mind because everything seemed to make sense now, in a beautiful way.
When we talk about motility of intestines, well, motility is for its digestive purposes, and that’s a no brainer. However, in one of the books that described the functional anatomy of the digestive system, it said that the motility of intestines is not just for digestive purposes, it also allows the abdomen to accommodate and change shape, it allows the neighboring organs to fill and empty, and the spine to flex…Isn’t it amazing that an animal’s body is designed in such a way that everything matters in not just one way? Another organ that really impressed me was the liver. Have you ever wondered why the liver feels like blancmange? I know some of us don’t like to describe things using food words. Anyway, the liver has to be kind of stiff in order to resist collapsing on the vessels running through it and this in turn makes the liver fairly friable. Have no fear, because our body places the liver in the most protected spot in our abdomen. It’s underneath the rib cage, sitting safe and sound on the falciform ligament, bounded by the dome-shaped diaphragm and supported by the xiphoid cartilage.
I did not complain about why we have to cram all this half English half Latin stuff, but I knew I was going to forget it sooner or later after the exam. Usually it was sooner. But now I just think that anatomy and physiology are absolutely an art, they are so wonderfully designed and I don’t want to forget it! I really wish I would have encountered such excellent studying materials when I was a first year student. However, third year is not too late!
“Anatomy is to physiology as geography to history; it describes the theatre of events.” -Jean François Fernel
