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concocted wild stories about what she must have got up to. We gradually dismembered her, spending hours reciting the names and routes of all the nerves and arteries, the attachment of muscles and the qualities of her internal organs. We had a fantastic time doing these dissections and I bonded with my anatomy lab partners. They went on to become my lifelong friends and three of them eventually became bridesmaids at my wedding. To an outsider, it may seem a little strange to be having fun in such a confronting place, but sometimes the only way to cope with this job is with humour, and the anatomy lab probably set the tone for how I deal with difficult problems to this day.
    One especially light-hearted moment came on the first Tuesday in November – Melbourne Cup Day. This is a big day for many Australians. We were dismayed to discover that our final anatomy exam was to be held at the exact same time as ‘the race that stops a nation’. The exam was being held in the anatomy lab and we were each assigned to a table containing various dissected body parts. We were required to display our knowledge of anatomy by pointing out different body parts and naming them correctly. Closeto the time that the race was due to be telecast, everyone became more and more restless. Many of us had never missed it and were sad that we would have to do so this day. It was quite clear the examiners were feeling that way too, with several of them whispering about it during the exam. Then, without warning, the examiners halted the exam and the television screens in the rooms flickered to life.
    â€˜There will be a brief pause so we can all watch the Melbourne Cup,’ one of them announced. ‘Please don’t talk to each other, because if you do you will fail the exam.’
    A loud cheer erupted and 150 students accompanied by 40 dead bodies watched the horses race. Only in Australia.
    There was another facet of anatomy teaching that was memorable for its distinct lack of dead bodies. This part of the course truly involved the living – it was the surface anatomy class. Part of the study of the human body is to learn how the contours of the skin correspond to the muscles and bones that lie beneath it. The whole idea of the exercise was to observe and feel these things in real live subjects – those subjects being our classmates. This class was nervously anticipated because it required all of us to strip down to our bathing suits in front of our group and explore each other’s bodies. This disrobing also extended to our lecturers who did not seem to share our embarrassment. Rumour has it that some groups got completely naked, but thankfully no one in our group was devotedenough to the pursuit of complete anatomical disclosure to go that far. It was bad enough having a bunch of strangers staring at my cellulite without having to decide if someone had one testicle hanging lower than the other. Whilst all of this sounds like an exercise in perversion, I understood the point. One of my lecturers described it well. He said, ‘Doctors are not like other people, we put our hands in strange, intimate places and seem to be able to detach ourselves from the fact we are doing it. This is not normal.’
    For those first three years, the study was relentless. There were endless lectures, note-taking and learning by rote from dry, humourless textbooks. There was little time for anything else. There was a lot of basic science and very little actual medicine, so it was hard to stay focused on the ultimate goal. Sometimes I would forget that one day I would be seeing patients. But there was no way they were going to let you near the infirmed until you had learned the basics, so I did my best to study everything I could. There were major exams every six months, and the week before these was completely devoted to study. This time was called ‘Swot Vac’ and was largely spent irrationally panicking about how little I knew.