Squeamish

Diana,

That's interesting the way you kind of switch gears in your mind to cross between clinical and subjective experience, the left and right hemispheres.

I've always been a tad squeamish -- can't stand to watch horror films, fainted at the sight of my own bloody nose as a teen-ager, went through a brief if vivid phobia of needles, etc.

I figured it must be a matter of tuning out the vividness of life that made the difference between my gut reactions and a more level-headed approach -- but also wondered if any of it was learned or innate ...

Also, I always wondered if people who are exposed to lots of medical ailments start having a radar for that sort of thing at dinner parties and social interactions -- i.e. I'm talking politely to Mrs. Jones at the hors d'oeuvres table but really I can tell by the pink rash on her neck that she's got acute gangliata of the colon -- okay, I'm making stuff up here -- but do things like that start to pop up in the mind?? -- i.e. I'm nodding politely as though I were listening to what you're saying but really I'm just picturing what a mess your colon must look like right about now??!

hehehe -- I think my imagination would go wild exposed to that much detailed information about the human body on a daily basis -- sometimes I do have dreams about my plants -- I've dreamt that a variety of white scale insect that attacks the stems of kentia palms was all over my body and it itched sooooo bad -- and I've dreamt about parasitic weeds suffocating my plants, growing faster than I can pull them out ...

I guess what I'm also saying is that I don't see how anything like hemorroid removal or pap smears can ever become so routine that you stop associating the personality of the patient with the procedure and become completely clinical -- and then I wonder if you start to care more or less for people after being so intimately familiar with their bodies, or is that something you turn on and off as well?