Island Med Student

Today was the day. I finally got to cut into my first human body. For those of you who don’t already know, I’ve had a desire for many years to slice open a person. Please don’t misunderstand, I’m not your average serial killer who needs to kill people and chop them up. It’s just that when I really like someone, I want to know them from the outside and the inside. Yes, I’m a little strange, but if you’ve read any of my previous blog entries, you already knew that.

Anyway, today I spent 5 hours in the gross anatomy lab. We dissected the outer and inner back of our cadaver, and created a video at the end of the lab to turn in for our grade. It was everything I thought it would be and more. I actually got to put my whole hand under the muscles of our cadaver, and used my scalpel to cut out all kinds of fat and fascia. The human body is even more amazing on the inside than I had imagined.

As we dissected our cadaver, I couldn’t help but think about her as a person. Why had she decided to donate her body to science? She was probably someone’s mother and someone’s daughter, and maybe someone’s sister. She decided to allow us to use her body as a tool for learning. Amazing, that is.

The other thing that I realized about the anatomy lab is that it’s really strange spending long hours around lots of dead bodies. When I came out of the lab and saw live people walking around, I felt like I had to re-adjust to the living.