The nerd talking

I listened in awe as Dr Hamed explained splenorrhaphy to us today. If I wasn't making a conscious effort to keep my mouth closed, I would have listened with my mouth wide opened in wonder. I didn't know such a thing as splenorrhaphy existed until today. Till then, I thought that once liver or splenic laceration or rupture occurs, there's no other way other than splenectomy (for spleen) or death (if liver rupture). Until we learned of these. Listen to this...

In case of liver laceration, you can do a finger hepatectomy to actually widen the laceration and then, attempt to ligate the bleeding arteries between the laceration. (There are other methods of repairing the liver injury too which are the common ones that you've probably heard of.)

For splenic laceration, you can actually 'suture' the spleen together by using the omentum. As it is not possible to directly suture the spleen together due to its consistency, you can use the omentum and bring it over the lacerated area and tie the suture through the omentum. Other than omentum, you can use other materials too, which I am not very sure of. And this is SPLENORRHAPHY. How awesome is that!!! You can also use this method to repair liver laceration.

I know that these knowledge are beyond my level. I don't even have the knowledge of anatomy and physiology of liver and spleen at the tip of my fingers. But occasionally, I need out-of-the-world, mouth-gaping knowledge like these to remind me why Medicine is so fascinating. The stress of assignments, studying for endless exams, drilling by lecturers day after day can make life dull and lustre-less. And the occasional infusion of exciting information and knowledge can add some spice back to the otherwise, dull life.

The 4 hours of class with Dr Hamed today ended with me feeling all hyped up and excited. Like I am ready to storm into the OT and stand through surgery after surgery. Padahal, kalau ditanya anatomy questions, my excited bubble would probably burst terus.

Anyhow, today was great. Because of that class. And because it's FRIDAY!