How Splenunculus!

Doesn’t it sound like something completely amazing and fabulous. I think I will refer to anything wonderful from now on as splenunculus! It’s actually a little thing that the human body can do, where the spleen doesn’t form in the usual way and creates a little tiny accessory spleen. That little guy is called a splenunculus. Cool right?

A tiny accessory spleen, or splenunculus if you will

Another crazy busy week spent filled with anxiety about not getting enough done while actually doing an awful lot. On Tuesday I attended a talk with Laura T where Dame Sue Black was interviewed about her life as a forensic anthropologist and about her book. It was a fascinating talk which I enjoyed, even if I don’t always agree with her opinions on certain aspects. I can’t lie, her book I had borrowed from Laura D and has been on a huge pile I’ve mentally noted as ‘to read at some point or another’. I now have my own copy which I can place there so at least I can give it back!

Terrible lighting and a poor attempt at an arty photograph

It was my turn in the post mortem room this week, most notably was the day that I spent asking people if they could smell poo on me. Sometimes certain smells, no matter how much you scrub, just won’t come off. Luckily no one actually said they could smell it, so it would appear it was one of those times the smell has just kind of got stuck in my nose (for want of a better term!) and I could smell it only myself. At the same time, I had quite a difficult evisceration to complete but gave my best shot at doing the three block technique and the pathologist seemed quite impressed. I then mistook a rather large spleen for a liver later on and I think she stopped being impressed with me at all.

Outside of that I’ve been cracking on with my assignments for my course, sneaking a bit of typing or reading whenever I can. I’m aiming to have them all at least in rough draft soon so I can feel a bit more chilled about it all and focus on some revision for the exam in May.

As part of my Health &. Safety assignment my camera roll has been filled with amazing photos like this one of a fire extinguisher

Rockstar the cat was back at the vets this week, he had to have four of his teeth removed as he’s an old little chap and they had rotted. That all happened a day after I had a visit to another East London hospital to find out that I have to have my four wisdom teeth removed in May. I’m not really happy about the fact I’ll be having my first very general anaesthetic too. Not very splenunculus at all.

Post-teeth removal Rockstar cheekily lying on all my reading material for the evening

Next Tuesday is the March Upminster Death Cafe which I hope will be a good one. Have a lot of people who have been in touch. The April and May dates have been confirmed which is great too. I was hoping to be involved in a project called Departure Lounge which is upcoming in May and June but sadly I can’t make the training dates. However I have just been asked to do a talk to some junior doctors about evisceration in September which is very exciting!

Death Cafe is next Tuesday!

That’s all from me for now, hope you have a splenunculus weekend!

MG x