Geeking out

You know you're a total geek when you take photos of clouds just because they resemble histology slides. These clouds last week reminded me of fibrocartilage, and the other ones from two weeks ago reminded me of serratus anterior muscles.

/geek

The San Diego sky at around 7:45AM on March 2, 2009:

vs. fibrocartilage:



The San Diego sky at around 7:45AM on February 22, 2009:

vs. serratus anterior muscles

Stitches

Today, Susan and I cleared fast and furious in order to make rapid headway, and our efforts paid off. For today, I finally managed to hit anterior rectus sheath, hidden away behind a good inch and a half (at least) of adipose tissue.

Then it was back to the dirty, greasy, smelly work of clearing out more of her adipose, in order to further expose her external obliques. She has large, well developed muscles and I wanted to get to them as fast as possible so that we could begin actually study of anatomical structures on our cadaver.

I actually smiled throughout the grueling work.

My smile came to an end, however, when Kevin announced that we would probably extract her brain and not the other cadaver's, since her facial structures weren't as nicely preserved as Mr. B. I am not looking forward to the sawing and the smell of the bone dust. I will have to mentally prepare.

Meanwhile, Tammy and Andrea had the unpleasant task of clearing away her large mons pubis. Poor Ruth, in life she had such a huge mons, large enough that Andrea could not palpate her clitoris until she had the length of her fingers a good 4" deep into the labia majora. After Andrea left early, Tammy finished clearing away the rest of the adipose, leaving behind only the labia majora and the external vulva. Ruth's vagina remains deep within her body, and so far has not been touched.

I can't speak for my table mates, but I feel weirded out by what a small part of me feels is a violation of her body. I know in life she knew full well what lay ahead when her body was donated to medical science, but the moral and ethical conflicts stemming from within me, a woman, while cutting into her breasts and reproductive organs was something I don't feel I was quite well prepared for.

I do my best to squelch the voices in my head that are telling me I am doing this cadaver wrong, and as I continue on my work of cleaning up the connective tissue on her anterior rectus sheath, I find that I am getting better at objectifying my task and separating myself from something that most people find revolting. I hope this does not mean that I am losing my ability to remain compassionate and emphatic.

But however, today we were afforded a small curiosity. Ruth has stitches, which we discovered as I was clearing the last of her lower abdominal fat. The small, green and blue sutures closed a saggital section that lay distal to her umbillicus, and stop shortly above her pubis symphysis. Could she have had a cesarian section? Umbilical hernia surgery? A hysterectomy? We all wonder aloud, trying to give a human angle to it. It catches me by surprise, because I don't recall seeing a scar in her skin as we made the cut in her lower abdomen.

Hopefully we'll have an answer to the mystery of her abdominal surgery within this semester. I feel like there isn't enough time to catch up.