Original entry: November 4, 2008
Today we were given the rare opportunity to watch a cadaver exchange and delivery from UCSD's willed body program.
Kevin warned us that at some point around 9:30AM, the cadaver of the petite elder woman in the prosectorium was going to be returned to UCSD (minus her pluck) and a new cadaver was going to be exchanged in her place. Our class would be the first to see the new cadaver.
Upon arrival of the cadaver, Kevin called out to the bigger guys in class to help wheel the gurneys in and out of the prosectorium. Jerry and Jared were two of the guys called upon. Kevin said he wanted, "Strapping young men" to assist, and as Jerry walked out with Jared I called to him and said, "Dr. Petti said strapping young men, you don't count!" and Elizabeth yelled at me because she thought I said Jared's name. I told her to pipe down, I was teasing JERRY, not JARED. She let out a nervous laugh.
A couple of minutes later, Kevin walked through the back door with a look on his face that reeked of annoyance along the "oh shit" line, and Jerry and Jared followed with a cadaver that filled the body bag. He invited us all into the prosectorium and the first thing he said was, "She's larger than I thought, and she's also the youngest we've had. She's in her 60s and died of cancer." He's skimming the computerized death certificate. He says to us all, "Let's open up the bag and see what we've got" and at that point several people, Elizabeth included, leave the room. We uncover the plastic on her torso and Kevin says in a dismayed voice, "God, she's fat" and if you could put the sad faced emoticon of :( onto his face, that's what you would have seen. He then patted her leg and said, "But thank you for your donation, you're very generous."
What pissed me off was upon hearing Kevin's exclamation, Elizabeth and one other gal whose name I've since forgotten, both ran in and took a look, as if the cadaver were a spectacle and object of ridicule. Elizabeth pointed to her pubic region and said, "Oh my God what's that?" I know what she meant, and while I thought of it, I didn't actually say it out loud, as some things are better left unsaid. The cadaver had a large mons pubis, and it probably didn't help that there's naturally some bloat in the pubic region associated with embalming. Kevin explained (quite patiently, might I add) that obese people tend to have fat deposits on their pubic region and it's nothing out of the ordinary, that some people deposit fat in certain areas and that's just a matter of genetics. She was still grossed out, but I heard one person whisper to her to be respectful, and she shushed up.
Note: I have nothing against Elizabeth, I think she was a friendly gal and all, but I was just taken aback at the lack of respect towards the donor cadaver. If I am lucky enough to live a long life and die at a ripe old age, too old to donate my organs so that the younger and sick may live, I'd like to bequeath my body to a school that does cadaver dissections to further anatomy students' knowledge (like the program at Miramar) of the wonders that we know as the human body. God forbid somebody laugh at me when I'm pushing 90 and laying cold, stiff, and preserved in a body bag on a table because my tits are sagging. But then again, I'll be dead and I won't care.
Anyway, Kevin went on to discuss how his next Bio232 class was going to have a lot of work cut out for them as far as cleaning her up, getting rid of her adipose tissue so that we could access the musculature and organs to demonstrate to the Bio230 anatomy classes. Jerry and I looked at each other, because that means US.
To be honest I'm not looking forward to being elbow deep in adipose tissue. I have enough fat tissue issues of my own since I gained weight after I quit smoking. I am still not comfortable in my own skin with this extra weight, and often times I find myself off balance and not feeling as if I'm moving quite right. But the real issue is, no matter how well preserved, the smell of adipose and fatty tissue is just revolting, and the truth of it all is that no matter how often you wash up, the smell of the fat tends to stick with you.
I see myself bathing in fresh lemon juice every Tuesday for all of Spring semester 2009. And I don't care who calls me a weenie for doing so, but I *will* wear a mask and do the weenie Vicks VapoRub under the nose trick while I am working on cleaning up the adipose. I will revel in my nerdiness and call myself Queen Weenie, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
Double gloving, here I come.
Showing posts with label bio160. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bio160. Show all posts
Thursday, February 5, 2009
A pluck, an aneurysm, and a female reproductive system walk into a bar...
This entry was from sometime in early December, 2008
Over the past month as the semester winds down to a close, Kevin has shown us some of the lab specimens he's obtained from various cadavers he's had the opportunity to work on in the prosectorium. All of the specimens are fascinating, and yet outside of the human body in their proper spaces they look alien and somewhat ghastly.
He has shown us so far, a pluck (tongue, larynx, pharynx, trachea, bronchii, lungs), an aortic aneurysm, a spinal cord ending at the cauda equina, and a female reproductive system, with both ovaries, uterine tubes, uterus, vagina, and labia majora. The reproductive system was what made my mind race the most, since our reproductive organs, in a sense, give us our biggest source of identity.
Did the uterus he held up ever bear children? I started to imagine what my own uterus looked like in comparison. Mine saw seven pregnancies, but only saw two come to term. My medical chart would read: Gravida 7, Para 2. The ovaries, much as mine must be now, were scarred from years of ovulating. My head was swimming with so many odd comparison thoughts that I had to step back, take a deep breath and stretch, and then resume the viewing.
The pluck he showed us during the respiratory system lecture was an odd sight. The tongue at the top was ridden with papillae and was a gray, hardened oddity. It was not the shiny, flexible pink mass we see in our mouths every time we yawn, eat, or brush our teeth. My classmate Elizabeth, the squeam(ish) queen, as one of my other classmates liked to call her, could not contain the audible "Ewww!" when Kevin held it up for all to see. I, on the other hand, was fascinated at the entire specimen. To see them all attached, and not in the stylized manner you see in a colored rendition in an anatomy book, was riveting.
I will be sad when this semester ends. I look forward to next semester, when I will be in Kevin's Bio232 class, and I feel that it will not only give me a wider breadth of understanding of the human body, but it will also be an invaluable tool for me to get through Dr. Dan Trubovitz's Bio230 class.
I feel bad for Kevin though. He has to put up with me again for another semester.
Over the past month as the semester winds down to a close, Kevin has shown us some of the lab specimens he's obtained from various cadavers he's had the opportunity to work on in the prosectorium. All of the specimens are fascinating, and yet outside of the human body in their proper spaces they look alien and somewhat ghastly.
He has shown us so far, a pluck (tongue, larynx, pharynx, trachea, bronchii, lungs), an aortic aneurysm, a spinal cord ending at the cauda equina, and a female reproductive system, with both ovaries, uterine tubes, uterus, vagina, and labia majora. The reproductive system was what made my mind race the most, since our reproductive organs, in a sense, give us our biggest source of identity.
Did the uterus he held up ever bear children? I started to imagine what my own uterus looked like in comparison. Mine saw seven pregnancies, but only saw two come to term. My medical chart would read: Gravida 7, Para 2. The ovaries, much as mine must be now, were scarred from years of ovulating. My head was swimming with so many odd comparison thoughts that I had to step back, take a deep breath and stretch, and then resume the viewing.
The pluck he showed us during the respiratory system lecture was an odd sight. The tongue at the top was ridden with papillae and was a gray, hardened oddity. It was not the shiny, flexible pink mass we see in our mouths every time we yawn, eat, or brush our teeth. My classmate Elizabeth, the squeam(ish) queen, as one of my other classmates liked to call her, could not contain the audible "Ewww!" when Kevin held it up for all to see. I, on the other hand, was fascinated at the entire specimen. To see them all attached, and not in the stylized manner you see in a colored rendition in an anatomy book, was riveting.
I will be sad when this semester ends. I look forward to next semester, when I will be in Kevin's Bio232 class, and I feel that it will not only give me a wider breadth of understanding of the human body, but it will also be an invaluable tool for me to get through Dr. Dan Trubovitz's Bio230 class.
I feel bad for Kevin though. He has to put up with me again for another semester.
My heart will go on
Original entry date: November 13, 2008
Dr. Kevin Petti knows the magic wonder of the store known as Lucky Seafood, but not for the same reasons I am in love with that Asian supermarket.
I love Lucky Seafood for the cheap Asian goods I can find in there: spring roll wrappers, silken tofu, soy sauce, palm vinegar, nata de coco, the best cheap Asian butcher knives you will ever find, and a plethora of other goods I procure on a monthly basis when I want to get my Asian heritage on.
But Kevin knows of Lucky Seafood for the butcher shop, as it's a way to obtain cheap pig offal for purposes of lab and dissection.
This week, Kevin gave us hearts.
They were not the grayish specimens with the noxious smell of formalin and phenol, neatly shipped to us in a vacuum sealed bag. These hearts were fresh from yesterday's slaughter, still pink and red, with traces of adipose tissue surrounding the aorta and vena cavae. There was a slight meaty odor to them, something not unfamiliar when dealing with meat that has warmed to room temperature from the butcher shop. It was not an offensive smell, but when you have a sense of smell that's hypersensitive like mine is, it's something you want to get away from as soon as possible.
The hearts were interesting. Cutting into them felt no different than cutting into a pork tenderloin. Sometimes I fear that participating in dissections will turn me from a happy carnivore into a vigilant vegan, but that has yet to happen. It's just something I have to mentally come to terms with. I think my general squeamish attitude from it boils down to the fact that I will not eat offal. I am perfectly content with skeletal muscle meat, but any other animal parts are off limits to me. I especially detest liver. I've always hated liver, and my parents tried to feed it to me to help offbalance my iron deficient anemia as a kid, but after finding out what the liver's role in our body is for? Yeah, I'm definitely against it. I refuse to ingest something that is basically a filter for body toxins, and that covers liver, kidneys, and lymph nodes (yeah... sorry chorizo, you're off my list). Blech.
Kevin is a fantastic teacher. He makes me want to be a better student. That sounds so stupid and girlish, and eerily reminiscent of something Jack Nicholson said to Diane Keaton in As Good As It Gets. But it's true. I'm starting to believe that I can actually absorb all of this anatomy stuff, remember it, have my brain catalogue it for future reference, and not just have it regurgitate the information onto a test paper when the time comes.
I won't lie. There's buttloads of crap to have to memorize in anatomy. I am stressed out like you wouldn't believe.
Dr. Kevin Petti knows the magic wonder of the store known as Lucky Seafood, but not for the same reasons I am in love with that Asian supermarket.
I love Lucky Seafood for the cheap Asian goods I can find in there: spring roll wrappers, silken tofu, soy sauce, palm vinegar, nata de coco, the best cheap Asian butcher knives you will ever find, and a plethora of other goods I procure on a monthly basis when I want to get my Asian heritage on.
But Kevin knows of Lucky Seafood for the butcher shop, as it's a way to obtain cheap pig offal for purposes of lab and dissection.
This week, Kevin gave us hearts.
They were not the grayish specimens with the noxious smell of formalin and phenol, neatly shipped to us in a vacuum sealed bag. These hearts were fresh from yesterday's slaughter, still pink and red, with traces of adipose tissue surrounding the aorta and vena cavae. There was a slight meaty odor to them, something not unfamiliar when dealing with meat that has warmed to room temperature from the butcher shop. It was not an offensive smell, but when you have a sense of smell that's hypersensitive like mine is, it's something you want to get away from as soon as possible.
The hearts were interesting. Cutting into them felt no different than cutting into a pork tenderloin. Sometimes I fear that participating in dissections will turn me from a happy carnivore into a vigilant vegan, but that has yet to happen. It's just something I have to mentally come to terms with. I think my general squeamish attitude from it boils down to the fact that I will not eat offal. I am perfectly content with skeletal muscle meat, but any other animal parts are off limits to me. I especially detest liver. I've always hated liver, and my parents tried to feed it to me to help offbalance my iron deficient anemia as a kid, but after finding out what the liver's role in our body is for? Yeah, I'm definitely against it. I refuse to ingest something that is basically a filter for body toxins, and that covers liver, kidneys, and lymph nodes (yeah... sorry chorizo, you're off my list). Blech.
Kevin is a fantastic teacher. He makes me want to be a better student. That sounds so stupid and girlish, and eerily reminiscent of something Jack Nicholson said to Diane Keaton in As Good As It Gets. But it's true. I'm starting to believe that I can actually absorb all of this anatomy stuff, remember it, have my brain catalogue it for future reference, and not just have it regurgitate the information onto a test paper when the time comes.
I won't lie. There's buttloads of crap to have to memorize in anatomy. I am stressed out like you wouldn't believe.
Buckets of eyeballs
Original entry date: October 28, 2008
Today we dissected cow eyeballs in class.
If I thought the brain smelled awful due to the fatty content of the myelin sheath, it pales in comparison to the noxious smell of a cow eyeball sealed in a vacuum bag with formalin. The eyeball itself still contained epidermal skin, as well as a good layer of fat surrounding the orbit itself.
Kevin asked each table to clean up the eyeball as much as possible, which meant cutting away all the outside epidermal tissue, as well as cleaning off all the other connective tissue surrounding the optic nerve and the sclera. Jerry did this part of the task, and having dull scalpel blades only made the job more tedious. The smell only became worse as he cut into layer after layer of skin and fat.
Finally, we had a clean eyeball and optic nerve. Kevin now asked us to gently cut away the cornea so that we could have access to the lens inside. He then instructed us to gently squeeze the sclera to remove all the vitreous humor inside the posterior cavity. He was in a rush to get the class moving, so when he stopped by my table after I had just finished removing the cornea, I had my hand around the eyeball and was slowly squeezing to get rid of the contents. He grabs my gloved hand with his, and says, "Come on baby, don't be afraid to give it a good squeeze" and he forces my hand to squeeze hard on the eyeball.
Everything came sloshing out onto the dissection tray, and as I'm sitting there with my mouth hanging open in horror, Kevin squeezes my hand one last time and then the lens of the eyeball shot out and splashed onto the mess below. It landed with an undignified plop. The surrounding pool of vitreous humor rippled for a split second, then all was still. Tyler looked surprised, Andrea looked as I did, and Jerry was laughing at the expressions Andrea and I both had. Then Kevin turns to all of us, smiling, and says with his Philly accent and chipper voice, "Now wasn't that fun?"
Oh man... I am a mix of jumbled emotions: horrified, fascinated, repulsed, and turned on all at once.
Today we dissected cow eyeballs in class.
If I thought the brain smelled awful due to the fatty content of the myelin sheath, it pales in comparison to the noxious smell of a cow eyeball sealed in a vacuum bag with formalin. The eyeball itself still contained epidermal skin, as well as a good layer of fat surrounding the orbit itself.
Kevin asked each table to clean up the eyeball as much as possible, which meant cutting away all the outside epidermal tissue, as well as cleaning off all the other connective tissue surrounding the optic nerve and the sclera. Jerry did this part of the task, and having dull scalpel blades only made the job more tedious. The smell only became worse as he cut into layer after layer of skin and fat.
Finally, we had a clean eyeball and optic nerve. Kevin now asked us to gently cut away the cornea so that we could have access to the lens inside. He then instructed us to gently squeeze the sclera to remove all the vitreous humor inside the posterior cavity. He was in a rush to get the class moving, so when he stopped by my table after I had just finished removing the cornea, I had my hand around the eyeball and was slowly squeezing to get rid of the contents. He grabs my gloved hand with his, and says, "Come on baby, don't be afraid to give it a good squeeze" and he forces my hand to squeeze hard on the eyeball.
Everything came sloshing out onto the dissection tray, and as I'm sitting there with my mouth hanging open in horror, Kevin squeezes my hand one last time and then the lens of the eyeball shot out and splashed onto the mess below. It landed with an undignified plop. The surrounding pool of vitreous humor rippled for a split second, then all was still. Tyler looked surprised, Andrea looked as I did, and Jerry was laughing at the expressions Andrea and I both had. Then Kevin turns to all of us, smiling, and says with his Philly accent and chipper voice, "Now wasn't that fun?"
Oh man... I am a mix of jumbled emotions: horrified, fascinated, repulsed, and turned on all at once.
Brains! BRAAINSS!
Original entry date: October 23, 2008
Today we dissected sheep brains in class. The zombie girl in me is as happy as a maggot in a heap of rotting flesh.
The first part, however, was odious and made my olfactory sensors cry foul. Maybe it's because brains tend to be fatty, due to the myelin sheath of the white matter, but they smell awful coming out of the formalin filled vacuum sealed bags.
Tyler was absent for all the fun, so I let Andrea do the initial cuts into the brain since she is still somewhat new to the idea of a scalpel and making surgical cuts. She did a mid saggital cut of the brain, through the medulla oblongata, diencephalon, and cerebellum, and we studied the ventricles. When that bit was over, we slapped things back together and I did a coronal cut through the cerebrum, so we could study the cerebral cortex. The contrast of grey vs. white matter was pretty amazing. Jerry did most of the cleanup since it was us girls who hogged up the scalpels.
Before we tossed the brains into the biohazard trash bin, we made sure to look for some key structures: infundibulum, optic nerve, optic chaism, septum pellucidum, corpora quadrigemini, precentral and postcentral gyrus.
The names of anatomical structures roll off the tongue like some melodic foreign language that sounds alien, yet familiar all at the same time. While the majority are named using Latin or Greek verbiage, it still sounds intoxicatingly exotic. When you hear corpora quadrigemini, it doesn't conjure up images of 4 tiny, squished bodies within the brain. Your mind draws images of something Latin: smoldering, smart, and sexy.
But brains are sexy, at least to me, and I don't just mean in the figurative sense. The smell of these little suckers, however, is not.
Afterwards we watched a video that Kevin took from his spring 2006 Bio232 class of a human brain extraction. It was very graphic, and therefore difficult for some in the class to watch. I was fascinated, but at the same time I couldn't help but think just how awful the smell of bone dust in the air would be.
I don't know if we're going to do a brain extraction when I take his Bio232 class in the spring, but I have some horrible sinking feeling that the smells associated with such a procedure will be akin to those inside a dental office, mid root canal. Yuck.
If somebody inhales bone dust, does it make them a cannibal? Or a human huffer, kind of like the punk kids in high school hiding under the bleachers huffing glue? Except this time it's bone dust? I don't think I'd want to be one to find out, even though I try and convince myself that I'm a zombie girl. I guess I could always be a vegan zombie.
Do you know what vegan zombies eat? GRAINS, GRAAINSS!!!
Sometimes, my mind works in strange ways.
Today we dissected sheep brains in class. The zombie girl in me is as happy as a maggot in a heap of rotting flesh.
The first part, however, was odious and made my olfactory sensors cry foul. Maybe it's because brains tend to be fatty, due to the myelin sheath of the white matter, but they smell awful coming out of the formalin filled vacuum sealed bags.
Tyler was absent for all the fun, so I let Andrea do the initial cuts into the brain since she is still somewhat new to the idea of a scalpel and making surgical cuts. She did a mid saggital cut of the brain, through the medulla oblongata, diencephalon, and cerebellum, and we studied the ventricles. When that bit was over, we slapped things back together and I did a coronal cut through the cerebrum, so we could study the cerebral cortex. The contrast of grey vs. white matter was pretty amazing. Jerry did most of the cleanup since it was us girls who hogged up the scalpels.
Before we tossed the brains into the biohazard trash bin, we made sure to look for some key structures: infundibulum, optic nerve, optic chaism, septum pellucidum, corpora quadrigemini, precentral and postcentral gyrus.
The names of anatomical structures roll off the tongue like some melodic foreign language that sounds alien, yet familiar all at the same time. While the majority are named using Latin or Greek verbiage, it still sounds intoxicatingly exotic. When you hear corpora quadrigemini, it doesn't conjure up images of 4 tiny, squished bodies within the brain. Your mind draws images of something Latin: smoldering, smart, and sexy.
But brains are sexy, at least to me, and I don't just mean in the figurative sense. The smell of these little suckers, however, is not.
Afterwards we watched a video that Kevin took from his spring 2006 Bio232 class of a human brain extraction. It was very graphic, and therefore difficult for some in the class to watch. I was fascinated, but at the same time I couldn't help but think just how awful the smell of bone dust in the air would be.
I don't know if we're going to do a brain extraction when I take his Bio232 class in the spring, but I have some horrible sinking feeling that the smells associated with such a procedure will be akin to those inside a dental office, mid root canal. Yuck.
If somebody inhales bone dust, does it make them a cannibal? Or a human huffer, kind of like the punk kids in high school hiding under the bleachers huffing glue? Except this time it's bone dust? I don't think I'd want to be one to find out, even though I try and convince myself that I'm a zombie girl. I guess I could always be a vegan zombie.
Do you know what vegan zombies eat? GRAINS, GRAAINSS!!!
Sometimes, my mind works in strange ways.
Hands
Original entry date: October 9, 2008
We looked at the cadaver again today, or at least a part of it this time. The arm and shoulder of the cadaver we looked at on Tuesday was today, disarticulated, and Dr. Petti brought it out to the front of the classroom so that we could look at the musculature of the arm, glenohumeral joint, and scapula.
The hand was only partially dissected, and the fingertips still had their skin and fingernails intact. With my gloved hand, I gingerly held it as we turned the specimen over to look at the muscles on the posterior aspect of the arm. The hand was stiff, cold, wrinkled due to preserving fluids, yet it was in every way human. I ran my thumb over one of the fingernails, even though I knew I wasn't going to get a capillary refill response. But the moment I did that, I was overcome with emotion. Dr. Petti came up to Andrea and I and asked what we thought.
I wanted to cry.
Now I'm a big girl, and I'm not emotional sort (yay for being a tomboy), but seeing the hand of this cadaver moved me. When this man was alive, those hands held those of the ones he loved, maybe they cradled a baby or two, caressed the face of his lifebonded, held flowers or kleenex for them, depending on the occasion. That hand maybe strummed a guitar, played piano, drove to endless school or sports functions for the kids, worked an entire lifetime at a job that allowed him to provide a life for himself and the ones he loved. That hand held on to somebody when they passed, and it probably held on to somebody as he passed. The hands, along with the face, are what make us human. Seeing this hand, even in death, affected me on a very deep and visceral level.
I didn't cry. I stuffed down that rebellious emotional streak and put on my professional clinical face as I curved my hand to the outside of the cadaver's hand. I told Dr. Petti and Andrea what I thought, and Dr. Petti said that yes, it is the hands and the face that make us human. His eyes lit up as he said that, as if I was the first in this semester to bring that up with him.
He then asked if we'd read the book Stiff, The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. I read it 4 years ago when it was given to me as a gift from a friend for Christmas, since I had decided to return to school to pursue nursing. As a recovering goth, I tend to get strange and morbid gifts from the loved ones, but I digress. In the book, the author describes what cadavers donated to science undergo, and she puts that human element back into the cadaver. She also points out how the doctors, students, interns, morticians, etc. who work with the cadavers don't go about it cold heartedly. The part of the book which stands out the most to me was the first part, where she was talking about heads that were cut off and placed into roasting pans for chickens because they were in the same size.
I gave away my chicken sized roasting pan the day I finished reading the book. Most people who know me know how I feel about decapitation. Something about it can turn my stomach, and if I'm not one to cry, I'm even more adamant about being one not to vomit. I think since puberty I've vomited about twice in my adult life. I can deal with evisceration, disarticulation, amputation, burns, decomposition, putrefaction, but not decapitation. It's something I have a very, very, difficult time dealing with.
I still think about the hand of that cadaver. He was a tall man in life, with long, well proportioned limbs and good muscular structure. We each held his heart, which was enlarged, as well as his left lung, his foot, and his brain. There was another wave of wonderment as I held his heart and brain... what kind of memories were stored in there and lost forever? Who was left on this earth that his heart once beat for, in a figurative sense? We did not see his face, but there was no need to. I already knew he was once a beautiful human being.
His muscular structureswere are beautiful. Years ago I would have had nightmares about dealing with cadavers in the prosectorium, as I've seen too many horror movies in which the hands come back to life and kill the living. But as I held the hand of the cadaver, that fear wasn't with me. The only feeling I had was the small sadness in knowing that I would be one of the last to maybe hold his hand, and a deep sense of gratitude for his ultimate sacrifice after death. That sacrifice was in donating his remains so that students going into the medical field could learn about the human body.
Growing up Catholic, and having accepted other theories of death from various religions, I am ready to acknowledge that there is some sort of afterlife, and that something does become of our soul after we leave our bodies.
Wherever that man's soul is, I hope he can rest well knowing what kind of an impact he's had on the students in my class. What kind of impact he left on me. Somewhere in the world beyond the living, beyond the nether, I hope that soul understands that I am deeply appreciative, almost beyond words, for allowing me to touch his body to learn more about how human bodies work. Even though we will never meet in this lifetime, I hope I was able to communicate to his physical shell that I am thankful for his sacrifice, and that's why I cradled his hand in mine.
We looked at the cadaver again today, or at least a part of it this time. The arm and shoulder of the cadaver we looked at on Tuesday was today, disarticulated, and Dr. Petti brought it out to the front of the classroom so that we could look at the musculature of the arm, glenohumeral joint, and scapula.
The hand was only partially dissected, and the fingertips still had their skin and fingernails intact. With my gloved hand, I gingerly held it as we turned the specimen over to look at the muscles on the posterior aspect of the arm. The hand was stiff, cold, wrinkled due to preserving fluids, yet it was in every way human. I ran my thumb over one of the fingernails, even though I knew I wasn't going to get a capillary refill response. But the moment I did that, I was overcome with emotion. Dr. Petti came up to Andrea and I and asked what we thought.
I wanted to cry.
Now I'm a big girl, and I'm not emotional sort (yay for being a tomboy), but seeing the hand of this cadaver moved me. When this man was alive, those hands held those of the ones he loved, maybe they cradled a baby or two, caressed the face of his lifebonded, held flowers or kleenex for them, depending on the occasion. That hand maybe strummed a guitar, played piano, drove to endless school or sports functions for the kids, worked an entire lifetime at a job that allowed him to provide a life for himself and the ones he loved. That hand held on to somebody when they passed, and it probably held on to somebody as he passed. The hands, along with the face, are what make us human. Seeing this hand, even in death, affected me on a very deep and visceral level.
I didn't cry. I stuffed down that rebellious emotional streak and put on my professional clinical face as I curved my hand to the outside of the cadaver's hand. I told Dr. Petti and Andrea what I thought, and Dr. Petti said that yes, it is the hands and the face that make us human. His eyes lit up as he said that, as if I was the first in this semester to bring that up with him.
He then asked if we'd read the book Stiff, The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. I read it 4 years ago when it was given to me as a gift from a friend for Christmas, since I had decided to return to school to pursue nursing. As a recovering goth, I tend to get strange and morbid gifts from the loved ones, but I digress. In the book, the author describes what cadavers donated to science undergo, and she puts that human element back into the cadaver. She also points out how the doctors, students, interns, morticians, etc. who work with the cadavers don't go about it cold heartedly. The part of the book which stands out the most to me was the first part, where she was talking about heads that were cut off and placed into roasting pans for chickens because they were in the same size.
I gave away my chicken sized roasting pan the day I finished reading the book. Most people who know me know how I feel about decapitation. Something about it can turn my stomach, and if I'm not one to cry, I'm even more adamant about being one not to vomit. I think since puberty I've vomited about twice in my adult life. I can deal with evisceration, disarticulation, amputation, burns, decomposition, putrefaction, but not decapitation. It's something I have a very, very, difficult time dealing with.
I still think about the hand of that cadaver. He was a tall man in life, with long, well proportioned limbs and good muscular structure. We each held his heart, which was enlarged, as well as his left lung, his foot, and his brain. There was another wave of wonderment as I held his heart and brain... what kind of memories were stored in there and lost forever? Who was left on this earth that his heart once beat for, in a figurative sense? We did not see his face, but there was no need to. I already knew he was once a beautiful human being.
His muscular structures
Growing up Catholic, and having accepted other theories of death from various religions, I am ready to acknowledge that there is some sort of afterlife, and that something does become of our soul after we leave our bodies.
Wherever that man's soul is, I hope he can rest well knowing what kind of an impact he's had on the students in my class. What kind of impact he left on me. Somewhere in the world beyond the living, beyond the nether, I hope that soul understands that I am deeply appreciative, almost beyond words, for allowing me to touch his body to learn more about how human bodies work. Even though we will never meet in this lifetime, I hope I was able to communicate to his physical shell that I am thankful for his sacrifice, and that's why I cradled his hand in mine.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
First Post
This journal was a year in the making, as my first experience with the cadavers at San Diego Miramar College was in January of 2008. I wrote about my experiences with the cadavers in my LiveJournal account, but they get lost in the mundane updates of my "regular" life.
I will repost everything here from my LJ for posterity, and then update this with new experiences as the year unfolds. I am enrolled in Biology 232, otherwise known as Experience in Human Dissection at San Diego Miramar College, under the tutelage of Dr. Kevin Petti, Ph.D.
Kevin, whom I refer to as Dr. Petti in the classroom (in class I prefer a strict teacher-student rapport), is a fantastic professor of Human Anatomy. His passion for the subject, as well as his deep knowledge and empathy for the wonder known as the human body never ceases to amaze me. I would not want to tackle this stressful of a class under any other mentor.
This journal is my way of reminding myself why I gave up a promising and financially secure career in the computer industry in a fit of a mid-life crisis and went back to health care.
This is my discovery of the human body in a way that 95% or more of the general populace will never have a chance to experience.
I will repost everything here from my LJ for posterity, and then update this with new experiences as the year unfolds. I am enrolled in Biology 232, otherwise known as Experience in Human Dissection at San Diego Miramar College, under the tutelage of Dr. Kevin Petti, Ph.D.
Kevin, whom I refer to as Dr. Petti in the classroom (in class I prefer a strict teacher-student rapport), is a fantastic professor of Human Anatomy. His passion for the subject, as well as his deep knowledge and empathy for the wonder known as the human body never ceases to amaze me. I would not want to tackle this stressful of a class under any other mentor.
This journal is my way of reminding myself why I gave up a promising and financially secure career in the computer industry in a fit of a mid-life crisis and went back to health care.
This is my discovery of the human body in a way that 95% or more of the general populace will never have a chance to experience.
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