FRECTIS

I don’t know how I forgot to shout this from the old blog but yesterday…

I HELD A HUMAN BRAIN IN MY HANDS.

I didn’t remember this until late at night watching Grey’s Anatomy’s Dr. McDreamy doing a quickie neurosurgery of some sort. How do you forget in the space of a few hours that you held a human brain in your hot little hands? That is nuts. Nuts. Crazy. A brain in my hands. I am the midwife who shivers when a Pap collection reveals the woman is ovulating and has lots of egg-white mucus or cringes when her client shows her bloody mucus plug on the toilet paper.

I was the first of only three students to do it and after that I took off my gloves (at the instructor’s suggestion) and picked up the dura mater. Whoa that is TOUGH material. I was invited to snap it and see if I could tear it. No way. It was like leather and so amazing. The cranium (cut like a helmet) was very hard. Surprisingly hard. I applied as much pressure to it and didn’t even see it bow. I can’t imagine how hard or how right one needs to have their head hit to actually break it! It’s scary thing to think how hard someone has to be hit to cause a depression fracture of the skull… and very sad. I also had a renewed appreciation for the pain my million dollar boy must’ve endured through his initial craniotomy for craniosynostosis.

I had a good day with four of my clients. Said goodbye to a mother of five until she is ready for number six. Met with another just starting out with pregnancy, one at the end, and one who just started with me. The one who just started with me shared her earlier breastfeeding woes due to a somewhat hairy birth and I asked, “Would you be open to chiropractic next time if baby has any issues? Sometimes an adjustment on the baby can help, but I recognize chiropractic isn’t for anyone…” She looked at me with a really wry smile and I was ready for the riot act about quackery, but instead she announced she just so happens to be a chiropractor and so is her husband. I learned a lot about her at her consultation with me, but apparently not that much. Duh! The word of the week!

ps: Anyone noticed the lack of entries in my I Try to Exercise category? Yeah, so has my ass. And on that note, Breyer’s rocky road is calling my name.

Frectis. OUT.

5 Responses to “Before I pass out from exhaustion”

1. Sarah Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 12:27

   Hey, that might have been *my* brain…I can’t find mine anywhere, but it’s okay, I’m getting used to functioning without it.

2. The Angry Medic Says:
   November 15th, 2006 at 4:11

   Feels good don’t it?

   I recently held one too. Thought it was pretty cool, but then I read this. Ours were just plain ol brains with the meninges removed. No dura-stretching for me.

   I’m jealous!

3. apgaRN Says:
   November 16th, 2006 at 11:49

   Thanks for the encouragement… and by the way, you get a big EW! factor on the holding-a-brain thing. That might have to be included on the “gross” list.

   Finally got a new post up today!

   Good luck on the paper. Makes me glad I’m not in school at the moment. Brings back the dreaded feeling that there is always something more to be done.

   apgaRN

4. Crushing Krisis » NaBloPoMo Round-Up #5: Fs, Ns, Qs, and Double-Us Says:
   November 19th, 2006 at 12:29

   [...] How many bloggers have written about holding a brain in their hands so far this month? Probably only Frectis, a midwife and student and great blogger. I also really like bloggers who post original art, and French Toast Girl’s NaBloPoMo archive is full of it. She has some very nice holiday cards for sale, though they are a little too Christ-y for my purposes. [...]

5. midwife with a knife Says:
   November 19th, 2006 at 12:52

   BRAINS!!! There’s something amazing about the human brain. I wasn’t surgically gifted enough to persue a neurosurgery, but if I were, it might have been cool. (Not that I don’t love what I do, but neurosurgery is crazy cool.)

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