The Other Side of the Gamete
So as KC’s comment so wonderfully illustrated, the testicular dissection was less than easy to watch or perform. Probably KC and I didn’t help this by getting into an all out pun war. And I have to give it to him; he was really on the ball….ouch….sorry about that. Why is it that puns are so hilarious to the pun-maker and so painful for the pun-listener? One of life’s great mysterious, I’m sure.
Anyway, oogenesis doesn’t have a patch on spermatogenesis in terms of ridiculousness. Mostly, it’s sad. Five months after birth, a woman possess around 7 million germ cells, by puberty only ~300,000 survive, and of those only about 500 will ovulate. The schedule by which this happens produces the familiar ‘biological clock’ that plagues so many professional women.
But far more interesting than making babies (well at least in terms of studying) is fixing them. Yesterday I shadowed a pediatric surgeon…and was completely, totally overwhelmed by the experience. It’s yet another experience that deserves a full blog. *Sigh* I’m running up quite a tab of things I still need to blog about: anatomy, the first round of finals, and now my first surgery.
Well, that means I’d better go watch all the genetics lectures I’ve been missing. *grumble grumble*
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