Anatomy, Day 1

So today's the first day of anatomy, and I have 3 primary goals for today (I always knew those goal-setting seminars I went to in high school would have a purpose beyond giving the counselors work to do and me a way to get out of class):

1. Don't hyperventilate, pass out or throw up in the anatomy lab. I'm usually not that squeamish--I watch the surgeries on Discovery Health on occasion (at least at my parents' house, the only place I've lived in the last year that had cable), but there's a big difference between sitting on the couch with a bag of pretzels and actually being gloved up standing next to a no-longer-living person. More on this later, no doubt, after I've actually done my first day.

2. Don't cut myself, or anyone else, with the scalpels. I'm talking accidentally, of course--It's not like I'm going to have to be restraining myself from spontaneously dissecting my tablemates (although I've heard that, as a profession, medicine harbors one of the largest percentages of serial killers. Creepy, huh? I guess it's the combination of God Complex, poor pedagogy that presents the body as a piece of meat rather than a human being, and the sort of cunning--and I use that in the nicest way, just to mean 'smarts'--that drives people into this particular calling).

3. Manage to get changed and spritzed with perfume (to cover up the eau de formaldehyde I'll doubtlessly be exuding) in time to meet my clinical preceptor on the inpatient unit this afternoon. From anatomy scrubs to clinic-ready wear (which kind of feels like drag, to be frank...but more about that too, no doubt, as time goes by) in forty-five minutes, with time for a lunch talk from the AMA in between? I think I can. I know I can. I am the little train that could.