The End of Anatomy

Well, I guess I’ll start with the obligatory apology for not writing all month. It has been a crazy one, full of performances, late nights in the dungeon, and brains. But, more about that later… Right now is a time to commemorate the end of an era… The end of Gross Anatomy Lab. I’m simultaneously excited and depressed by this… I loved Anatomy. It’s so reliable, feels so personal. I feel like anatomy lab is the one place where I really have learned all of the secrets of the human body, as cheesy as that sounds… I felt sad to say goodbye to Ari, our wonderful teacher and incredibly interesting cadaver. So, I suppose it’s time for a commemorative list to recognize the highs and lows, because anything worth celebrating deserves a really good list. 🙂

All My Favorite Parts:

• Muscle – Palmaris Longus in the forearm or Plantaris in the lower leg… love those long tendons. Oh… and Sartorius… this one is hard, I love muscles.
• Artery – Femoral Artery. Finding that sucker was so satisfying.
• Nerve – Saphenous Nerve in the leg for its interesting route or Facial Nerve for its lovely branching.
• Vein – Internal Jugular. Fat and reliable. Ready to stick a bunch of CVCs in that one day. 🙂
• Plexus – Why, the brachial plexus, of course!
• Bone – Ethmoid bone, behind the nose. Talk about a crazy shape.
• Organ – Yep, gonna do it… testes. Just so cool, inside and out. The first runner up is the kidney.
• Duct – Main Pancreatic Duct, just for being so incredibly important, but also impossible to find unless you actually cut the pancreas in half.

The Moments:

• Best Dissection – Forearms, flexors and extensors… Still love that MSK anatomy and the fact that you can separate out each beautiful muscle and follow it to each shiny tendon… and then pull on it to see what it does! First runner up: all endocrine/reproduction dissections. 🙂
• Worst Dissection –  I’m not the biggest fan of the GI tract so those dissections weren’t quite as interesting to me.
• Biggest Surprise – When our IVC was filled with bright red blood which nearly sprayed me in the face when I cut through it to remove the heart from the chest cavity.
• Most Memorable – No surprises here… bisecting testes and a penis, with far too much pomp and circumstance.
• Grossest – Mouths. I hate the mouth. It is just super gross and I don’t like finding random teeth stuck in places that don’t even seem to make sense after the head is hemisectioned…
• Weirdest – Removing the eyeball from it’s socket… and then cutting it in half. But man, what an amazing organ.
• Guiltiest – Skinning the eye and eyelids… That was just super odd and I felt terrible about it after.
• Biggest Disappointment – The pancreas. Such a cool, important organ and we barely even realized it when we found it because it just looks like a mushy mess.
• Most Satisfying – Cleaning off and identifying all of the beautiful branches of the brachial plexus.
• Couldn’t Look Away – The inside of the eye… the iris looks amazing.
• What I’ll Miss – Skinning, cleaning off vessels, playing with my tablemates. Yes, playing… we really did have quite a bit of fun.
• What I Won’t Miss – Constantly wondering whether or not the pen I was just chewing on was one I used in the lab…

Definitely noticing a trend here in my interest in musculoskeletal, reproductive organs, and the eye over most other systems… Thank you, Anatomy Lab, for scarring me, torturing me, confusing me, and teaching me a TON. Peace!

 (photo from http://society6.com/bengiles1/Muscles-77A_Print#1=45)