Vocabulary geekery

columbina  is confused about the class business, and if he is, I figure somebody else is too, so let me clarify. I'm now taking two, count 'em, two classes:
1. Medical Terminology - I'm about halfway through this one.
2. Anatomy - I'm just starting this one.

They're both online, and there's a lot of overlap between the two, which is good - not only because it makes it easier, but because there's a heck of a lot of new material (to me, anyway) contained therein, so by the time I go over a lot of it twice I'm more likely to actually remember it.

Col and I also spent a bunch of WoW time, between fights, geeking out over vocabulary. Here's one bit I've been having trouble with that I was telling him about, and I'll repeat it all again because the more times I repeat it the more likely I am to remember it, and there are still a couple of these that I tend to forget. Some you'll know, some you probably won't unless you have a background in this stuff.

Suffixes for surgery:
-centesis - puncture, tap (like amniocentesis)
-desis - binding, fusion
-ectomy - excision, surgical removal
-pexy - surgical fixation
-plasty - reconstruction, plastic repair
-rhaphy - surgical repair, suture
-stomy - surgical creation of an opening (colostomy is probably the most common)
-tome - instrument for cutting (incising)
-tomy - incision
-tripsy - crushing (as in a gallstone; lithotripsy is a general term for crushing of a stone)

(Maybe later I'll tell you about the intestines. Right now I'm not in the mood for the ick factor of that one.)