Original entry date: February 3, 2009
Today we met in Kevin's office once again. This time it was a rendezvous point before we found an empty room in which to meet in and discuss the readings, as well as watch a video. After this meeting we were to head on up to the prosectorium and familiarize ourselves with our surroundings and the cadavers.
Discussing the readings was interesting. The majority of us seemed to agree on various topics such as whether we were better off learning about anatomy via use of cadavers, whether we would donate our bodies to science post mortem if we were too old to be considered for organ donation, etc. Kevin asked us thought provoking questions such as why we feel there are people who are uncomfortable with the idea of cadaver dissection, why some people look at it as desecration of a corpse, etc.
Personally I think it's mostly a Western thing, as in most Eastern cultures, the culture doesn't shy away from the subject of death. The Western idea of sending our dead to a funeral parlor and prettying up the dead to look suitable for an open casket wake, after which follows the ceremony of burying them underground in a fancy casket is largely unheard of in the Eastern cultures. Outside of the Western world, families of the dead bathe them after death, anoint them with fragrant oils, dress them, and hold a wake inside the home for extended family and villagers to view. After the viewing, the dead are either buried or cremated, usually on a funeral pyre, and then the remaining bones are pounded into dust along with the cremains, and then scattered among the fields.
In many cultures, it is the family of the deceased that is responsible for tending to all the above arduous tasks. It seems prevalent in our Western culture that the dead are a taboo subject, that we outsource what Eastern civilizations have done for several millenia, the caring of the dead, to others who have the emotional capacity and fortitude to touch the remnants of what was once alive.
As a result, cadavers to us are part of that unspoken taboo, that IN YOUR FACE reminder that all of us will someday die, and that our remains are to be handled by strangers for proper disposal. Dissection does not mean proper disposal, and I think that's one reason as to why it's so forbidden, why to some people the subject is beyond reproach.
After the discussion we watched Kevin's movie of the human brain extraction, the same video he showed my Bio160 class last semester, so it was a nice way to break out old memories (I am a fan of bad puns). Following the video, we headed upstairs to the prosectorium to introduce (or in my case, reintroduce) ourselves to the cadavers.
Mike was the first cadaver we looked at. He's been there the longest, is the most handled and dissected cadaver, and looked exactly the same as I'd last seen him. Kevin said that he was desiccating, however, and it would be up to us to re-wet the cadavers when we were done with our days' work. We passed around his heart and lungs, looked inside his abdominopelvic and thoracic cavities, and we played the "Name this structure!" game as Kevin pointed to something and asked us to provide the proper nomenclature. I had a good amount of them memorized, and Susan kept smiling at me, as she did during Monday night's Kinesiology class. She said she's amazed that I retained so much information and she asked if I'd mind working with her this semester. I'd love to, I think she's a fantastic gal.
Kevin taught me well. What can I say? He laid out the anatomical terminology and physiology in an orderly fashion, and Jerry, Andrea, and I (sometimes with Tyler) sat at Starbucks numerous times outside of class hammering away at the information, dissecting it all on paper, cataloging it into our brains. We studied our asses off, and as a result Andrea scored the highest A in the class, and I was in 3rd place right behind her. I know my anatomy, and as Susan said, I should be proud.
We looked at the second cadaver. He's not as fully dissected as Mike was, and we were able to get a good glimpse of his face. His nose was pushed to one side, and flattened, probably during the embalming process. He had a device implanted right under the subcutaneous layer of skin in between the L axillary and L hypochondriac region which turned out to be used for chemotherapy injections. The man died of cancer that metastasized, but we didn't look up the death certificate to find out the specific type. His eyes were half open, and he had a pained expression on his face, with his mouth halfway opened, as if to silently convey to us in death that dying sucks, and you too will grimace as I am when it happens to you.
I am not familiar enough with him to name him yet, but I'm sure that will change as we work on him further.
The cadaver that was delivered to us shortly after Thanksgiving, the one of the larger woman, she lay untouched by us that day. We will look at her this coming Tuesday, and Kevin did say that he would need a lot of us to work on her just cleaning up fat and separating fascia from underlying structures.
We wet down the second cadaver and cleaned up the room. We hung up our lab coats and said goodbye for the day, with cheerful promises to see each other on Tuesday.
I had just finished reading a book called Body of Work by Dr. Christine Montross, which I found to be more along the lines of what we're doing as compared to the book Stiff, by Mary Roach. Stiff covered more ways in wich donor cadavers are used, whereas Body of Work was solely about the cadaver that was being dissected by the author and her lab partners in their first year of medical school. It's their journey of discovery with their cadaver, which they aptly named Eve (due to a lack of a belly button, which they said equals lack of umbilicus, umbilicus to placenta... which leads to what? God created Eve, Eve was not born to man nor woman). It was a touching book, one that mirrored many of the thoughts I harbor over what I am about to do, what I am about to experience in this class.
Many conflicts within my own code of ethics, my morality, my own beliefs of what becomes of our mortal coil once we shed our earthly bounds, they were addressed in this book. Maybe not by answers, but the fact that the author felt similarly as I did, even if she couldn't resolve her own personal conflicts, I find a comforting justification that what I am doing is for the right reasons.
I need to get a copy of that book to Kevin and hopefully he'll find time to read it. What few fears I had left, what little trepidation remained upon my signing up for this class, that book erased them, and now I look forward to my upcoming experiences with heart, eyes, mind, and arms wide open.
I am ready to learn. This is transcendence.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Biology 232, Spring Semester 2009
Original entry date: January 27, 2009
Today we all met in Dr. Kevin Petti's office, downstairs from the anatomy labs, to begin our semester for the Experience in Human Dissection lab.
He says it's his largest class to date, as there are 10 of us. Eight of the ten of us are female, proving the statistic that 80% of students in the medical field tend to be women. I don't know all of the names, but I do remember Jerry, Susan, Emmy, Adam. There is one gal who has a BS in Biology, who plans to be a doctor someday (surgeon, to be exact). She's from South Africa, and she plans to enter the US Navy to help with her medical schooling, but wants to attend John Hopkins in DC for med school but I'm surprised that's the route she's going to take. Usually when you join the military and have them put you through med school, you end up at USUHS, aka Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. At least that's where the Navy told me I'd end up, had I went ahead and went to Humboldt State, then joined the USN to help pay for med school since UC San Francisco was going to be far too expensive for me. But I digress. My dreams of med school are years behind me, and I'm on a different trajectory now towards a similar, but samely fulfilling goal.
We stayed in Kevin's office for about an hour, discussed who we are, what we want to do in life, and what we were hoping to get out of this class. It was basically a friendly meet and greet, and also a good time for Kevin to go over the syllabus with us, and to remind us to do all of our readings of course material since the next meeting would discuss opinions and reactions to what we've all read.
The vibes were good. One gal in the class remembers me from Dr. Debra Mlsna's Chemistry 100 + Lab class from Winter 2006. I sat in front, and rarely ever turned around to look at people behind me so I didn't recognize her at first but I knew she looked familiar. I still can't remember her name.
I told Kevin that I would be honored if he'd allow me to take my soon-to-be-mine Nikon D90 camera with the ability to capture video at 25 FPS in HD (drool) to class sometime so we could take photos for purposes of updating his website. He said yes, and it would help with cataloguing the specimens we already have in place.
Maybe I'll be useful in class after all.
Today we all met in Dr. Kevin Petti's office, downstairs from the anatomy labs, to begin our semester for the Experience in Human Dissection lab.
He says it's his largest class to date, as there are 10 of us. Eight of the ten of us are female, proving the statistic that 80% of students in the medical field tend to be women. I don't know all of the names, but I do remember Jerry, Susan, Emmy, Adam. There is one gal who has a BS in Biology, who plans to be a doctor someday (surgeon, to be exact). She's from South Africa, and she plans to enter the US Navy to help with her medical schooling, but wants to attend John Hopkins in DC for med school but I'm surprised that's the route she's going to take. Usually when you join the military and have them put you through med school, you end up at USUHS, aka Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. At least that's where the Navy told me I'd end up, had I went ahead and went to Humboldt State, then joined the USN to help pay for med school since UC San Francisco was going to be far too expensive for me. But I digress. My dreams of med school are years behind me, and I'm on a different trajectory now towards a similar, but samely fulfilling goal.
We stayed in Kevin's office for about an hour, discussed who we are, what we want to do in life, and what we were hoping to get out of this class. It was basically a friendly meet and greet, and also a good time for Kevin to go over the syllabus with us, and to remind us to do all of our readings of course material since the next meeting would discuss opinions and reactions to what we've all read.
The vibes were good. One gal in the class remembers me from Dr. Debra Mlsna's Chemistry 100 + Lab class from Winter 2006. I sat in front, and rarely ever turned around to look at people behind me so I didn't recognize her at first but I knew she looked familiar. I still can't remember her name.
I told Kevin that I would be honored if he'd allow me to take my soon-to-be-mine Nikon D90 camera with the ability to capture video at 25 FPS in HD (drool) to class sometime so we could take photos for purposes of updating his website. He said yes, and it would help with cataloguing the specimens we already have in place.
Maybe I'll be useful in class after all.
There's a new girl in town
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.
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.
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.
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