Back in med school I had a buddy who was a very intellectual, academically rigorous guy. He used to criticize me because I enjoyed the study of anatomy. He said it was a “dead science, no pun intended,” since there was nothing left to learn, nothing to theorize, just memorization of body parts. Well, actually that was just about the right speed for me, plus it was totally cool. I mean come on, dissecting bodies, how could you beat that?
One thing I really like about anatomy is the terminology.
Take the glabella for example. That’s the hairless space between your eyebrows just above the nose. The name comes from the Latin word glabellus, meaning smooth.
And the pylorus, part of the stomach that acts as a valve, allowing partially digested food to pass from the stomach into the intestines at a controlled pace. The name comes from the Greek, pyloros, meaning gatekeeper.
Did you know you had a tail? The spinal cord is a thick bundle of nerves that runs down inside your spine, ending in your lower back, where all the slender fibers that form the cord loosen and sort of feather-out. That part is called the cauda equina, from the Greek, meaning horse’s tail.
Early in my career it occurred to me that I had learned a second language – the language of medicine. And it quickly became clear that in order to speak coherently with my patients and their parents I had to constantly translate from docspeak. Words that had become part of my everyday usage were foreign to non-medical people.
“How long has he been febrile?” – Huh?
“I mean when did the fever begin?”
“Has she been voiding today?” – What do you mean?
“Sorry, has she peed lately?”
You get the idea. Now I consider myself pretty good at communicating information to non-medically trained people, but it still surprises me now and then to learn how little of what I say registers, or how it gets reinterpreted. So there’s always room for improvement.
And when I think about it, there’s kind of a third language heard in many of my encounters, which is kidspeak. So after conjuring up a medical diagnosis for a particular issue I need to translate it for the parents, THEN turn to my patient and translate again in an age appropriate manner.
No wonder I’m always running late.
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