I woke up really groggy last Monday. It was the first day of exam week. The exam of the day was Gross Anatomy & Embryology. As I ate my cereal I watched the morning news. Oprah had been busy over the weekend. She was campaigning for Obama. The New York Post decided it would be clever to talk about Obama’s Oprah-generated momentum by calling it “Omentum.”
That was kind of weird. I was thinking about omentum — specifically greater and lesser omentum. The day’s exam would cover face & scalp, infratemporal fossa, and the gut.
I think I hate the gut. Its just nasty looking. And greasy too. I find the greater omentum disgusting. The greater omentum is this flat tissue-like thing that hangs in front of your stomach. It can move around too. If there is a perforated gut, the omentum might migrate to the site and wrap around it. I also heard that sometimes, as a surgeon is working in the area, the omentum may slowly make its way to the foreign object — the surgeon’s hands.
That’s just gross.
Incidentally, when I was looking for a picture of the NY Post cover up above, I found another picture of Oprah. She was actually holding someone’s omentum in her hand.
Sources: MSNBC.com, Oprah.com, and NYPost.com.