I haven't forgotten about this blog. After we started the brain extraction, things became a bit intense and I needed to step away from all of this and do normal things. To get my mind off of it all (no pun intended).
I'll be updating this within the next day or two. There was a lot that went on, and a lot that needs to be shared.
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Ready check
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.
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.
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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