Friday night dissection snippets
Week two of the musculo-skeletal module is over, which means that we're halfway done with the module. And the semester is half over as well! Wow. Time really does fly when you're constantly cramming for exams, freaking out about SGDs, cursing the name of your Management professor, studying, splurging on a new Stabilo highlighter, taking a break from studying by discreetly sniffing your new Stabilo highlighter, buying microwave dinners from the downstairs Ministop, getting your car scratched by an old lady, looking at yourself in the mirror and crying a little, rocking yourself to sleep in fetal position, regretting several past personal decisions, eating breakfast the next morning while crying a little, and secretly promising to never return the hangers from a certain horrible laundry place because they delivered your uniform late, consequently forcing you to wear the an old dirty uniform for three days. While crying a little.
I'm kidding. Don't freak out, dear parents of mine, for none of that really happened. Except for the parts about the constant cramming, microwave dinners, and the old lady scratching a car.
It's a Friday night and I'm so tired (but then again, when am I ever not tired?). We had another six-hour dissection today (our third one so far) and after that, I attended an intense anatomy review session taught by Jeff, our resident registered physical therapist ®. (Get it? The ® means registered! Hehehe I am so clever.) By the time school was over, I was wishing so badly for a nice, fancy dinner at one of those snazzy Italian joints that serve the free bread that I like so much with free balsamic vinegar and free olive oil. Instead, I ended up getting takeout from a gas station McDonalds.
But it's all right. As I was walking home, wondering what to do with the Coke that came with my burger and fries (context: I don't like softdrinks), I passed an idle police officer by. I offered him the Coke, and he smiled and said thanks. I smiled and wished him a good evening. I'm not getting an Italian dinner tonight, but on the bright side, imagine all the carbs I just spared myself! Right? :D *internal sobbing*
Okay, about cadaver dissection. I'm not going to give a very detailed account right now because the memory of my first time dissecting isn't so fresh anymore, and I also don't want to spoil the experience for first-timers out there (okay honestly I just feel too lazy right now to write about it). But I will say this: it wasn't bad. Actually, it was good. We cut the chest open first, then the arms, right down to the fingers. We made windows of skin that allowed us to peek into the superficial layers of muscle and fat. Then we cleared out some fascia to be able to see the individual structures, the blood vessels, nerves, ligaments.
Everything looks kind of faded and brown/grey, far from the colorful illustrations you see in your anatomy books. And all the tissues are kind of stuck to each other, so unless you clear out the connective stuff using either your hands or some tools, you won't be able to distinguish one muscle from the other.
Here's something interesting: (well-preserved) nerves are actually very taut, and you can pluck them like guitar strings! Thankfully, doing that doesn't produce sound, because if it did then that would be pretty creepy.
Also, I found that for many of us, the hardest part to dissect is the hands. Aside from the physical difficulty of separating fascia from important structures, there's a lot of emotional toil involved. Over time, when you're dissecting the arms and the chest, it's relatively easy to forget that you're cutting up a human being. The appendages just begin to look like cylinders of muscle and fat and vessels as the dissection day wears on. But hands, no matter what, will always look like... well, hands. And hands, I think, are almost as powerful as faces in eliciting emotion.
Cadaver #3 is actually a female. A very small and thin one, with, thankfully for us, minimal fat. Her hands are a very interesting thing to look at. Other cadavers' hands look dry and scaly, with dirt beneath their nails. #3's hands, on the contrary, look kind of like mine. They're quite smooth and look like they'd fit in medium-sized gloves, just like mine do. The obvious differences of course are that hers are more brown and leathery. But, her nails! They're amazingly neat. All trimmed perfectly, with no dirt underneath.
One theory about her past identity that's been going around in the dissection group is that she was a stroke victim who was paralyzed for some time, which would explain why one side of her body has more fat than the other. We really have no way of finding the truth yet but I currently think of her as a lady who didn't eat much and highly valued her personal grooming.
On my first dissection three days ago, I felt so freaking prepared. I spent the night before studying and watching dissection videos. I came into the lab wearing my scrubs, a lab coat, gloves, a face mask, and lab goggles. I tied my hair and wore a headband to keep my bangs out of my face. That was three days ago. During today's dissection, I didn't bother with the coat, #3's hands ended up touching my arm, I got fascia in my bangs. The "ew" factor wears off pretty soon. It varies from person to person, but for me, I'm getting more and more indifferent each day (By the way I still washed my hair when I got home).
Eating has become a difficult chore for me. Well, eating meat in particular. I haven't eaten meat in two days, just salads all the way. And I have no way of verifying for myself, but I feel really smelly every after-lab. On the jeepney ride home earlier, people were giving me looks. The person beside me kept touching/covering his nose. I don't know if I'm imagining these things or if I am legit stinky. Ah, whatever. I'll get my clothes washed in the morning (but with a different laundry shop this time, because the last one totally delivered my clothes late).
Anyway, like I said, after today's dissection we had a review session led by good old Jeff, Registered Physical Therapist ®. This wasn't an official school event, just something that Jeff volunteered to do. It filled up a surprising number of seats in the auditorium. And when I got home, I saw that Dr. Harvy, a faculty of ASMPH, posted this:
What a lovely week it has been. Good luck to all the board takers tomorrow!!!
I'm kidding. Don't freak out, dear parents of mine, for none of that really happened. Except for the parts about the constant cramming, microwave dinners, and the old lady scratching a car.
It's a Friday night and I'm so tired (but then again, when am I ever not tired?). We had another six-hour dissection today (our third one so far) and after that, I attended an intense anatomy review session taught by Jeff, our resident registered physical therapist ®. (Get it? The ® means registered! Hehehe I am so clever.) By the time school was over, I was wishing so badly for a nice, fancy dinner at one of those snazzy Italian joints that serve the free bread that I like so much with free balsamic vinegar and free olive oil. Instead, I ended up getting takeout from a gas station McDonalds.
But it's all right. As I was walking home, wondering what to do with the Coke that came with my burger and fries (context: I don't like softdrinks), I passed an idle police officer by. I offered him the Coke, and he smiled and said thanks. I smiled and wished him a good evening. I'm not getting an Italian dinner tonight, but on the bright side, imagine all the carbs I just spared myself! Right? :D *internal sobbing*
Okay, about cadaver dissection. I'm not going to give a very detailed account right now because the memory of my first time dissecting isn't so fresh anymore, and I also don't want to spoil the experience for first-timers out there (okay honestly I just feel too lazy right now to write about it). But I will say this: it wasn't bad. Actually, it was good. We cut the chest open first, then the arms, right down to the fingers. We made windows of skin that allowed us to peek into the superficial layers of muscle and fat. Then we cleared out some fascia to be able to see the individual structures, the blood vessels, nerves, ligaments.
Everything looks kind of faded and brown/grey, far from the colorful illustrations you see in your anatomy books. And all the tissues are kind of stuck to each other, so unless you clear out the connective stuff using either your hands or some tools, you won't be able to distinguish one muscle from the other.
Here's something interesting: (well-preserved) nerves are actually very taut, and you can pluck them like guitar strings! Thankfully, doing that doesn't produce sound, because if it did then that would be pretty creepy.
Also, I found that for many of us, the hardest part to dissect is the hands. Aside from the physical difficulty of separating fascia from important structures, there's a lot of emotional toil involved. Over time, when you're dissecting the arms and the chest, it's relatively easy to forget that you're cutting up a human being. The appendages just begin to look like cylinders of muscle and fat and vessels as the dissection day wears on. But hands, no matter what, will always look like... well, hands. And hands, I think, are almost as powerful as faces in eliciting emotion.
Cadaver #3 is actually a female. A very small and thin one, with, thankfully for us, minimal fat. Her hands are a very interesting thing to look at. Other cadavers' hands look dry and scaly, with dirt beneath their nails. #3's hands, on the contrary, look kind of like mine. They're quite smooth and look like they'd fit in medium-sized gloves, just like mine do. The obvious differences of course are that hers are more brown and leathery. But, her nails! They're amazingly neat. All trimmed perfectly, with no dirt underneath.
One theory about her past identity that's been going around in the dissection group is that she was a stroke victim who was paralyzed for some time, which would explain why one side of her body has more fat than the other. We really have no way of finding the truth yet but I currently think of her as a lady who didn't eat much and highly valued her personal grooming.
On my first dissection three days ago, I felt so freaking prepared. I spent the night before studying and watching dissection videos. I came into the lab wearing my scrubs, a lab coat, gloves, a face mask, and lab goggles. I tied my hair and wore a headband to keep my bangs out of my face. That was three days ago. During today's dissection, I didn't bother with the coat, #3's hands ended up touching my arm, I got fascia in my bangs. The "ew" factor wears off pretty soon. It varies from person to person, but for me, I'm getting more and more indifferent each day (By the way I still washed my hair when I got home).
Eating has become a difficult chore for me. Well, eating meat in particular. I haven't eaten meat in two days, just salads all the way. And I have no way of verifying for myself, but I feel really smelly every after-lab. On the jeepney ride home earlier, people were giving me looks. The person beside me kept touching/covering his nose. I don't know if I'm imagining these things or if I am legit stinky. Ah, whatever. I'll get my clothes washed in the morning (but with a different laundry shop this time, because the last one totally delivered my clothes late).
Anyway, like I said, after today's dissection we had a review session led by good old Jeff, Registered Physical Therapist ®. This wasn't an official school event, just something that Jeff volunteered to do. It filled up a surprising number of seats in the auditorium. And when I got home, I saw that Dr. Harvy, a faculty of ASMPH, posted this:
What a lovely week it has been. Good luck to all the board takers tomorrow!!!
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