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.