The morgue under our hospital looks just like a morgue.
The long hallway smells of wet dog like it's supposed to. A quorum of aproned antisocial types with knives stand around like chefs. Jars and plastic buckets full of pieces of humans neatly line the walls like barrels in a candy store. In the corner, a table with a camera rig and lights is set up for photographing specimens against an ugly blue background like on a porno set. Dull metal autopsy tables with cutting boards straight out of Martha Stewart's kitchen take up most of the space, separated by stretches of nasty green tile like in grandma's bathroom. A light box for radiology films hangs on one wall with an old stereo from 1986 on top of it (dual tape deck, one with auto-reverse, the other not so lucky) with an actual tape inside, also like in grandma's bathroom. And in the corner, also like in grandma's bathroom, a toilet.
I know, for that is what I also thought. But nay. It was a toilet.
This was not your grandma's toilet. I walked over to it for a closer look and no, it wasn't a sink or a basin, it was just a toilet. But something didn't look right. I looked at it for a while and went down the list of essential criteria for toiletness. There was a toilet plunger. There was a toilet flush lever thing. The piping looked appropriate to me. At its heart was a bowl with toilet water. The rim was there, though I wouldn't want to touch it. In the bottom of the bowl was the sine qua non of toiletude: the drain of oblivion.
Still, something was off. So I imagined myself going through the motions of using this toilet to discover what was missing and promptly ended the imagination when I got totally wet and cold and grossed out. This toilet was way too big for humans.
My colleague was standing next to me and noticed that I was staring at the toilet busy with my calculations. She leaned over and whispered, 'This looks like a good place to shoot Saw 4.' That's grim.
On the other hand, the morgue is actually the least grim place in the hospital since nobody actually dies here. In the tape deck: 'Bhangra mix 94.' Who cares what the toilet is for? Party in the basement, yar.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
The pouch of Reda
A word about the title of this blog. This is the story of Reda's pouch. It is an anatomical pouch that I claimed one day while dissecting a cadaver. It is not a pleasant pouch, but it carried a generic and quite replaceable nomenclature and I could not resist but to strip it of its genericity and apply my own eponym to infuse it with life and especially vanity.
Specifically, Reda's pouch (also known as the pouch of Reda) is the compartment created by the interface between the uterus and the urinary bladder. An unfortunate location, but I was disappointed to find that the narrow communication between the third and fourth ventricles (that I had coveted so much since my youth) had already been snatched up and out of my reach forever by that half-wit Sylvius a few hundred years ago. Clearly, I far surpass this moldy ignoramus in medical knowledge at this point yet he still gets to keep his stupid aqueduct. His name contaminates several miscellaneous desirable sites in the human body (all highly lucrative real estate and some so elegant and ethereal that his audacity--and begrudgingly, deftness--in even trying to get his name to stick shocks me to no end). A fissure. My fissure.
Standing over me sprinkling salt on my wounds was Magendie, who filched my foramen while Treitz and Oddi ganged up on me and wrenched the duodenum from my fists and spat on my ligament and sphincter with their gross acidy eighteenth century spit to claim them for themselves.
No. I am left with a pouch that can be found in less than half of the population, and even so, is absolutely useless. It is there by accident, an anatomical default, the unavoidable and purposeless outcome of space and tissue. A dank, reeking swamp, a sewer for the female inards, a tripe basket!
That is what I, bloodied and defeated, was able to wrestle away from those entitled buffoons. And even so my claim is still disputed. The best I can get is 'the vesicouterine pouch' and then in pen and in my own handwriting: 'of Reda.'
Specifically, Reda's pouch (also known as the pouch of Reda) is the compartment created by the interface between the uterus and the urinary bladder. An unfortunate location, but I was disappointed to find that the narrow communication between the third and fourth ventricles (that I had coveted so much since my youth) had already been snatched up and out of my reach forever by that half-wit Sylvius a few hundred years ago. Clearly, I far surpass this moldy ignoramus in medical knowledge at this point yet he still gets to keep his stupid aqueduct. His name contaminates several miscellaneous desirable sites in the human body (all highly lucrative real estate and some so elegant and ethereal that his audacity--and begrudgingly, deftness--in even trying to get his name to stick shocks me to no end). A fissure. My fissure.
Standing over me sprinkling salt on my wounds was Magendie, who filched my foramen while Treitz and Oddi ganged up on me and wrenched the duodenum from my fists and spat on my ligament and sphincter with their gross acidy eighteenth century spit to claim them for themselves.
No. I am left with a pouch that can be found in less than half of the population, and even so, is absolutely useless. It is there by accident, an anatomical default, the unavoidable and purposeless outcome of space and tissue. A dank, reeking swamp, a sewer for the female inards, a tripe basket!
That is what I, bloodied and defeated, was able to wrestle away from those entitled buffoons. And even so my claim is still disputed. The best I can get is 'the vesicouterine pouch' and then in pen and in my own handwriting: 'of Reda.'
Saturday, March 10, 2007
I have so much to say
Not really. Uselessness notwithstanding, this blog will be a place for me to spew my inane (or ane in the wrong sense) ideas and comments on things about which my comments have (at best) questionable utility.
I will start small, dispensing with trivial things such as world politics, health care, religion, folklore, and maybe mortality if I can be bothered to make something up about it. From there, I hope to work my way up to the big issues like my favorite ice cream and why you should not trim your nose hairs in a hurry.
I would like to point out that while your comments are welcome, I will generally not read them personally. It's not that I don't appreciate the wisdom of others, it's just that I don't really like it. So just sit back and enjoy getting frustrated with my aggravatingly prolix, unnecessarily dense, and seriously redundant prose.
I will start small, dispensing with trivial things such as world politics, health care, religion, folklore, and maybe mortality if I can be bothered to make something up about it. From there, I hope to work my way up to the big issues like my favorite ice cream and why you should not trim your nose hairs in a hurry.
I would like to point out that while your comments are welcome, I will generally not read them personally. It's not that I don't appreciate the wisdom of others, it's just that I don't really like it. So just sit back and enjoy getting frustrated with my aggravatingly prolix, unnecessarily dense, and seriously redundant prose.
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