spleenz

Two facts I learned today:

#1 – You can live comfortably with 1.5 lungs (I saw half of a lung removed from a 75 year-old patient today)

#2 – 10-30% of the population has multiple spleens. The condition is known as polysplenia. Clever, huh.

Ever since I’ve started medical school (and actually all the way back in undergrad), I’ve had this ridiculous and nonsensical fantasy that the things I read in my textbooks don’t actually happen inside my body. Glycolysis in my cells? Not a chance! Vasodilation when I get hot? Never! Immune cells constantly fighting infection? Get outta here!  As absurd as this may sound, I’m sure it’s a self-preservation coping mechanism. After all, any system that functions in my body can also become dysfunctional. By refusing to believe that I personally could be lumped into the general population’s statistics, I can slightly remove myself from my patients and avoid internalizing their conditions. As insensitive as this may sound, it is truly the only way to survive in medicine. From what little experience I’ve had thus far, I’ve learned that the key is to distance yourself from the patient’s medical condition but connect to the patient’s values.

So for the record, you who are reading this have a 10-30% chance of having multiple spleens while I don’t have a spleen at all!