_ In the months leading up to the beginning of school, I found myself in possession of two books that dealt with the topic of anatomy lab. The first book is Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam, which is a series of short stories about the life of a medical practitioner from pre-med to professional. In one of the stories, a group of medical students are in the anatomy lab, dissecting a cadaver, and one of the students expresses that he is uncomfortable cutting through a tattoo on the cadaver’s chest, as he believes that symbols are sacred. Until I read this, I had not fully considered what it would be like to be in a room with dead bodies, and possibly cutting into them. After reading this story, I had a new anxiety about what is called “dead lab.” Would I faint? Throw up? Cry? Have to leave the room? How would I feel if I saw tattoos on the cadaver? Could I separate the scientific from the personal? Not having dissected anything since I was in the 8th grade, when we dissected a sheep’s eyeball, I was justifiably concerned about the dramatic leap to dead human beings.

_ This anxiety was confirmed when I picked up a second book called Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach, in which she graphically depicts a room full of disembodied heads – in use by students of cosmetic surgery. Was I too going to have to cut into a dead head? Could I handle it?

Strangely, when I daydreamed about anatomy lab, the single lesson I thought would be my greatest challenge was reproductive anatomy. It seemed to me too violent a gesture to slice into a man’s penis, or to cut into the sides of a woman’s vaginal cavity. And it’s possible that if we had started out our anatomy course with reproductive anatomy, I might well have done all of the following: cried, thrown up, run out of the room, and fainted. However, having spent several months in the lab already, I was nice and desensitized when I got my reproductive anatomy lesson only today. (And it softens the experience that we do not ourselves do the dissections, but instead just look at those that have been done for us by a team of talented [and brave?] upper-level students.)

I guess it’s not all that rare to get to stand in a room full of cadavers and see for one’s self what’s under the skin of a human being. All medical students have this experience, and yet when I’m standing in the lab, I feel my position is both privileged and unique. And I felt this way today, staring at a sagittal section of a penis and identifying parts. I expressed curiosity about the cross-section of the penis, since none of the cadavers offered this perspective, so the TA promptly collected a scalpel and cut through the penis on some poor cadaver “just for me.” I can’t deny that I found the experience both slightly disturbing and yet oddly exhilarating. So now I know the ins and outs of the penis, and this is a good thing, as apparently there is a possibility that naturopathic doctors may be performing vasectomies in due time.  (And as far as the female reproductive anatomy goes, I’m sad to report that all of our female cadavers were lacking their uterus and ovaries due to hysterectomies.)

All of this to say that in spite of my anxieties heading into my anatomy lab course, I have yet to faint, throw up, or cry. I have had to leave the room on occasion, and I have hovered near the window when necessary (the fumes can be a bit much).  In the beginning, I did find myself getting emotional about the persons behind the bodies. I found myself wondering “What friends and family were in that woman’s life, and did they hold that hand in her dying days? Did some man put a ring on that finger once upon a time?” But I quickly learned to detach and to study the bodies for the educational tools they are.

This course is also confirming for me the sense that our bodies are, in fact, not ourselves. They are the vessels we inhabit while we exist on this earth, and we should do our best to care for them as lovingly as possible, as our care or lack thereof will greatly impact our experience of life. Through this course, I am finding that any previous hang-ups I had about my body are nonsensical, and I am happy to report that I feel them dissolving effortlessly away. I (and we) ought to simply enjoy and admire our bodies for the mind-bogglingly amazing and complex organisms they are!

Side note: Last quarter one of the NDs who teaches at NCNM provided us with a regime to follow in order to keep our livers safe from the toxic chemicals encountered in dead lab. How many medical students can say the same? I love my school!!

I have had some health issues in the past that have led me to follow some pretty wacky diets. Think dairy-free, gluten-and-all-other-grain-free, sugar-free… basically “fun”-free! I found dinners and lunches to be pretty do-able, but breakfast was a real challenge, especially because breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. I was all doom and gloom, eating omelette after omelette, wondering when I would be able to eat waffles again when – lo and behold – I discovered the Eggy Pancake! This recipe changed my life. Well, at the very least, it changed my attitude toward a strict diet at breakfast time. You need:

2 eggs
Approx. 1 tablespoon of your favourite nut butter (peanut, almond, cashew…)
A pinch of baking soda (too much will make your pancake taste bitter)

THAT’S IT!

A few additions I’ve made over the years:
Approx. 1 tablespoon of ground flax seed
Approx. 2 tablespoons blueberries
½ teaspoon of cinnamon
Honey to drizzle on top

Combine these ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together so the consistency is smooth (those nut butter lumps can be a bit of a challenge sometimes). Heat a frying pan to med-low heat. Add a bit of butter, oil, or whatever butter substitute you use, and then pour the batter in the pan. Allow it to cook until you see little bubbles forming or until you peek at the underside and it looks golden, and then flip it over and finish cooking the other side (you may want to turn the heat down or off for the second side). You’ll be amazed to discover that you’ve just made a pancake without any flour of any kind whatsoever! I drizzle honey over mine. Yummy!!

This breakfast is super easy, packed with protein so you won’t be longing for a snack too quickly afterward, and gentle on the gut for all those food-sensitive people out there. I’ve passed this recipe on to many a soul who has thought I must be nuts only to become a believer shortly afterward. If you’re starving for breakfast ideas, give it a try!


_

_ I’m in a class this quarter called “Cultivation of the Practitioner.” Understanding the connection between mind and body, this class is designed specifically to help students identify and then deal with their “shit” (in the instructor’s words). The idea is that a person who hasn’t dealt with their issues and hang-ups is not in any position to help others with theirs, and that in order for us to become effective practitioners, we must first look inward and heal ourselves. I’m all over this stuff.

We did an in-class exercise this week in which the instructor brought in an assortment of rocks ranging from pebbles to boulders. She lined them up in the front of the room and then asked us to imagine the singular most painful or hurtful event in our lives. She asked us to choose the rock that best represents that event, and then said, “Now imagine carrying that rock with you forever.” I don’t think anybody in the class was too excited about that prospect. 

Although the painful experiences of our lives do not have any physical weight, they weigh down our emotional and spiritual space much as a rock weighs down our physical body. Over time, this emotional weight can manifest in the form of disease. Some rocks are important if they remind us of an unsafe situation in which we might otherwise find ourselves again, but the large majority of them have no function other than to make us miserable! Furthermore, carrying this weight makes dealing with other pebbles that may come along all the more unbearable. We can choose to carry that weight with us and allow it to burden us, which likely prevents us from being open to the fresh and new, or we can practice letting go of what no longer serves us. In this way, dealing with the smaller pebbles of every day life is much more manageable. Easier said than done, perhaps, and yet, as a start, I feel that imagining a giant boulder in your backpack every time you feel like stewing in the sludge of the past is good incentive not to go there. The first step in this process, of course, is identifying what it is that is burdening you.

Step #1: Know thy shit. 

Then decide if you'd rather carry your shit or (excuse the metaphor but I'm on a roll--) dump it. 

 

 

Or, at least, welcome to my medical school experience. In September 2011, I made the move from cuddly Canada to the quirky city of Portland, Oregon to begin a four-year journey toward a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. Having now completed one term of my training (and officially calling myself 1/16th doctor), I can now wholeheartedly declare that the naturopathic profession and its practitioners inspire me on a daily basis and that I am excited to learn what is to come in the remainder of this year and in the years beyond. I hope to share some of it with you. Please join me in this transformative experience!