The singular of feces

I was told today on surgery service that the singular of feces is "fex," but I didn't really buy it, and now that I look in to it, Wiki is telling me that in Latin, faeces is the plural of faex (with the a and e stuck together in that weird letter) but that there is no singular in English, making "feces" a plurale tantum (more Latin), like scissors and pants. (Pants!) Also, "fex" is not in the Scrabble dictionary, though "fedex" is. That made me like the Scrabble dictionary less.

But what does all of this have to do with medical school and its not being so bad? Well, one question is whether I correct them on this fex issue. Surgeons are the correctors, not the correctees. Though this is not about to turn into an anti-surgeon rant. I really like the people I'm working with. They are surprisingly supportive even though I am a certifiable moronic waste of space. They still try to sell me on surgery a little bit even though I can't comprehend why they would want to encourage someone as dense as I seem to go anywhere near their profession. Before you all start saying, "I'm sure you're not being that stupid," check it. When asked where the tip of a PICC line sits, I answered... the stomach. That is amazingly fundamentally wrong. Instructively, my first instinctual impulse answer was the correct one: in the superior vena cava. Specifically the caval-atrial junction. But I talked myself out of this because I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that we feed people through these lines. We put TPN (total parenteral nutrition) into people's hearts? But yeah, we do. Many questions, I psych myself out of the right answer. I assume that I don't know. I'm hoping to move out of that mindset because a surprising amount of the time, I do know. But yeah, stomach. I may not live that one down.

I did my very first stitches on a real human today, sewing the incision made to remove a lipoma. It's not easy wielding that needle driver and the pickups, very awkward, like doing everything left-handed. Practice. But I appreciated being allowed to try. I thank the patient for her extra minutes under anesthesia for my learning. The pros did everything cosmetic, I promise!

Bowel is pretty amazing to touch and watch peristalsising. It's like an alive sausage casing. I had to put my whole hand in our patient's abdominal cavity today, and her organs were so warm! That surprised me, though it makes sense. Just an unexpected sensation. But I saw all those abdominal organs for the first time today: liver, spleen, gall bladder (very small), stomach, duodenum, pancreas. So much better than anatomy lab.

I'm suddenly overly tired. I'm sure I felt inspired and grateful today. I did. Zonk.