Anatomy Time

The verdict is in: anatomy lab is fun and amazing! I have completed three lab sessions (including a double dose on Friday), and I am looking forward to spending four afternoons per week there.

Let me back up a bit.... On the first day, I was apprehensive, to be sure. We had a lecture first, which oriented us to some of the nomenclature used when describing body structures and where they lie relative to one another. When we were dismissed to go to lab, there was a mass exodus from the lecture hall and then a lot of confused milling about; no one knew quite where the lab was! (In our defense, the layout of our health sciences center is a bit confusing.)

After changing into my brand new scrubs, retired running shoes, and one of my dad's old lab coats - I'm told that the more layers you wear, the less your skin will smell - I took a deep breath, entered the lab, and searched for my table. Stony Brook assigns 4 students to each cadaver, and I am lucky enough to have 3 intelligent, thoughtful, and kind lab partners. We are also lucky in terms of our cadaver. The man from whose generous donation we benefit was very large and well-muscled. During our first lab, when we identified the muscles of the back, our table was quite popular because we had a great example of what they should look like. (Although we sometimes have more work to do as we remove the skin and cut through certain structures, you can imagine that our cadaver shows much better examples of these than some of the very small elderly females that some of my classmates have.)

It didn't take long to adjust to the smell, to using a scalpel, or to digging around with my hands to define the edges of muscles and locate certain structures. On Friday we used a hammer and chisel to remove the outer portion of the spinal vertebrae in the lower back in order to see the spinal cord, which we also cut open. Then will turned the cadaver over (with a great deal of help from bigger male teaching assistants - 2 of my lab partners are girls who are smaller than me) to begin examining the muscles of the chest.

At this point we saw our man's face for the first time. Surprisingly, this didn't bother me. I just keep wondering who he was and what made him decide to give us this incredible gift. Some tables have covered their cadavers' faces as they work on the front portion. While it is generally good to cover any parts you are not working on with a wet sheet to preserve them for longer, we chose to leave our face uncovered. In a strange way, I feel as if, as we explore this man's body, we are getting to know him. We have discovered (and cut around) two tattoos so far, and have noted a distinct absence of wrinkles.

Later in the semester, pathologists will come in to tell us how each person died, although we are beginning to get clues. For example, our cadaver has some sort of a red dent in his forhead between the eyes, so we are speculating right now that he may have died relatively young from some sort of trauma. The one at the next table, an older woman, has two breast implants (which certainly surprised the students at that table as they were dissecting the chest!), perhaps as a result of a double mastectomy from breast cancer.

Next week we will remove the ribcage and begin dissecting the heart and lungs. There is an incredible amount of information associated with this class, but it is fascinating. The professors are very good about providing clinical correlations to what we learn - why, for example, lumbar punctures (spinal taps) and epidurals are done in the lumbar spine. (The reason is that the spinal cord itself does not extend that far down the back, so you don't risk puncturing it with the needle.) I am approaching this class as I would learn a new language, trying to learn trends and rules in the naming of structures. Many are logical (as in the case of the serratus muscles, whose edges look serrated where they attach to the ribs), though some just need to be memorized.

And now back to the books... enjoy the long weekend everyone!