Morbid indulgence

Thursday, August 31, 2006

I do not deserve my opposable thumb. In fact, I do not deserve my place in the evolution of species. I am not doing anything noteworthy or even rational lately to be able to earn the title Homo sapiens, the thinking man. I should belong to the lowest of the low in the hierarchy of organisms.

I say this due to my performance in our surgery preceptorial. We studied how to tie knots this afternoon. I said to myself, "hey, what could be difficult about tying knots? just make a loop and insert the one end, right? surely, it's nothing more than tying shoestrings, and i have been tying shoestrings since i was 5 so i already have the theoretical foundation laid down."

to my surprise, it was not that easy. we had to follow things such as "over-under", "make a figure 4, the left hand should only apply tension, the right hand should do all the work, use this finger to do such and such and such..."

5 fingers in each hand and our professor was expecting us to watch each of them closely. he made it look so easy, but when i tried it i had no idea what to do with my fingers. they were in total chaos. they finally decided on anarchy after figuring out that the brain has no useful instructions.

that was only the one-hand knot. the two-hand knot was more complicated, and needless to say, it made my head spin.

i gave up.

all i know was how to make rabbit ears. and that stuff they do in maskman where they take turns making senseless figures with a string. beyond that, i was totally clueless.

and thus another tick mark was added in may's long list of failures.

i was so frustrated, i must have used all the defense mechanisms ever recorded in the field of psychology and added some of my own, just to preserve my ego. i wonder how i will fare in our practical exam this semester. my only chance now is the proper identification of surgical instruments.

so help me god.

Morbid Indulgencestarted this journey at8/31/2006