not for the squeamish

on tuesday mornings i have anatomy lab, which is also known as cadaver or dead lab. yes, it is a little unnerving and yes my first morning i was a little apprehensive about how i might react. it is definitely so much easier to understand anatomy lecture by studying a real human body. i'm not fond of the smell and occasionally get a little freaked out, especially looking at the face. we don't get to dissect the bodies as our school only receives six per year, so work study students do the cutting. i think i would find it much harder to handle if we did the dissecting ourselves.

this morning we saw some really interesting pathologies. one of the bodies had multiple cancers- colon, breast, and maybe something else, but we're not given info other than age and cause of death. the liver on the person was so large it extended almost to the top of the hip bone. the liver should not really extend beyond the ribs. the body also appeared to have had a lobectomy, staples in the sternum, an enlarged large intestine, and an enlarged spleen. the stomach was also very distended. it was amazing to see what happens to the body when it suffers from a serious illness.

we also saw a pair of lungs with serious problems. part of the top right lobe had completely deteriorated and had multiple blebs. yes, bleb is a medical term- a large blister filled with serous fluid. part of the lung tissue has become stretched out and can no longer contract. the TA thought that the person may have had some sort of pneumonia.

seeing the disease process makes me very thankful that my body, to the best of my knowledge, is functioning well. who knows, maybe i have a tumor festering somewhere.. but i'm not really worried about it at the moment. and if i do, i hope that some day med students get to look at it and learn. its really pretty fascinating. definitely worth twenty two grand.