Wherein Elizabeth Sees her First Dead Guy (Well, part of him, anyway...)
Aloha my friends! Today is Friday, Sept. 29, 2006, and I know that some of you know why THAT'S a big deal. (Hint: the answer's in the title of today's post!) Yes folks, today was Cadaver Lab the First. Our group (minus one, not sure where she was) met in the hallway outside of the lab, and the mood was subdued. Out came Professor Cleary in his white lab coat; he provided us with a few insructions, and, like lambs to the slaughter, we followed him through the swinging double doors.
Inside was a large room, with 6 or 8 work stations arranged throughout it. On several of these tables were trays, white metal ones, with... stuff... on them. And by stuff, I mean human tissue from the central nervous system. A.K.A.: brains and spinal cords.
Our group started at one of the easier stations; all that was there were brains in various states of undress. That section's focus was the midbrain, so we got a good look at that, as well as the pons, cerebellum, and quite a few of the cranial nerves. Next up was the telencephalon - the stuff that most people think of when they think of brains. You know - the bumpy stuff on top. Then it was whole brains with some vasculature, and Megan and I managed to identify a whole lot of stuff we didn't think we really knew. We're such geeks that we actually high-fived when we finally figured out where the internal capsule was located!
The next station was hardest. Here was a head (just a head, nothing below the neck) saggitally dissected. It looked like this, only not an x-ray. I couldn't find a really good image of something similar to what we were looking at, which is probably just as well, since you probably don't really want to see it! Each half of the head was lying skin side down, and the face had been wrapped around with cheesecloth, so you couldn't really see it. This allowed us to focus on the internal structures, and dissociate what we were seing from a real person. Then I noticed the nose hair, which was totally distracting. And then, I accidentally saw the face. I whipped away, turning a bit white, but decided to suck it up, and look again. Our head is about 5 yrs old, so he's (or it might be a she... I call it a 'he' because his head his shaved, but I imagine they shave all the cadavers' heads) a little grey and rough looking. It wasn't so bad looking at his face - I couldn't really see clearly, since he was lying on it, and the cheesecloth was partially obscuring it. The weird part is that we're so used to symmetry, and you look for the other eye - and there's nothing there. Plus, his nose was kind of bent. I think the hyaline cartilage might have been damaged...
So no one puked. No one passed out. No one wept, no one panicked, no one flipped. I personally touched a few human brains, got to see some amazing stuff, and looked a dead guy half in the face. Then I went and had blood taken (thyroid check time!) and had to shut my eyes while the tech drew the blood. Hm.
Love,
Elizabeth
Inside was a large room, with 6 or 8 work stations arranged throughout it. On several of these tables were trays, white metal ones, with... stuff... on them. And by stuff, I mean human tissue from the central nervous system. A.K.A.: brains and spinal cords.
Our group started at one of the easier stations; all that was there were brains in various states of undress. That section's focus was the midbrain, so we got a good look at that, as well as the pons, cerebellum, and quite a few of the cranial nerves. Next up was the telencephalon - the stuff that most people think of when they think of brains. You know - the bumpy stuff on top. Then it was whole brains with some vasculature, and Megan and I managed to identify a whole lot of stuff we didn't think we really knew. We're such geeks that we actually high-fived when we finally figured out where the internal capsule was located!
The next station was hardest. Here was a head (just a head, nothing below the neck) saggitally dissected. It looked like this, only not an x-ray. I couldn't find a really good image of something similar to what we were looking at, which is probably just as well, since you probably don't really want to see it! Each half of the head was lying skin side down, and the face had been wrapped around with cheesecloth, so you couldn't really see it. This allowed us to focus on the internal structures, and dissociate what we were seing from a real person. Then I noticed the nose hair, which was totally distracting. And then, I accidentally saw the face. I whipped away, turning a bit white, but decided to suck it up, and look again. Our head is about 5 yrs old, so he's (or it might be a she... I call it a 'he' because his head his shaved, but I imagine they shave all the cadavers' heads) a little grey and rough looking. It wasn't so bad looking at his face - I couldn't really see clearly, since he was lying on it, and the cheesecloth was partially obscuring it. The weird part is that we're so used to symmetry, and you look for the other eye - and there's nothing there. Plus, his nose was kind of bent. I think the hyaline cartilage might have been damaged...
So no one puked. No one passed out. No one wept, no one panicked, no one flipped. I personally touched a few human brains, got to see some amazing stuff, and looked a dead guy half in the face. Then I went and had blood taken (thyroid check time!) and had to shut my eyes while the tech drew the blood. Hm.
Love,
Elizabeth
posted by Elizabeth @ 15:40
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