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)

Best Moments of Musculoskeletal Anatomy

We just started a really dissection-heavy sequence and it feels like we’ve been living in the lab lately (mentally and physically)… Unfortunately, that makes me smell like chemicals all the time, but on the bright side, it also makes for good blog material. So here are the best moments of musculoskeletal anatomy in the past two weeks. And, of course, I’ll post the worst moments later this week.

The Best:

– Getting to say the word “Sartorius” in every day life. Not going to lie, every time I say it in my head I can’t help but hear Biggie Smalls… anyone else?
– The brachial plexus! Definitely my favorite thing to dissect so far. It was so satisfying to put all this time into learning all of the different branches and components and then get into lab and actually be able to find a network of nerves that looks exactly like it does in the atlas.

– Being able to determine which forearm muscles are which by pulling on them and watching to see which finger moves. Creepy, but kind of awesome.
– Uncovering the superficial palmar arterial arch. Another intricate mess of vessels that looked exactly like it’s supposed to… I don’t know why I enjoy that so much, but I do.
– Tendons are really shiny and pretty. Which can be distracting for those of us with the attention spans of kittens, but it’s still a plus to have something nice to look at, amid the many nasty things in lab.

– This gem, unveiled by one of my classmates recently. (Thanks, MT!) I will never forget the name of this muscle now.

Here Comes Anatomy!

Trying to simultaneously eat dinner and prepare for my first anatomy dissection with a helpful how-to video tonight…

Okay, maybe I’ll give it one more shot…

Nope. Nope, this is not happening tonight. Maybe next week.

…On the bright side, we start dissecting tomorrow and I CAN’T WAIT!