Anatomy

I did not sleep well last night. Sweat was pouring off of me, I was uncomfortable, and I couldn't stop thinking about what my first day in Gross Anatomy would be like. A human cadaver. Lots of human cadavers in the lab... 24 dead bodies. What would it smell like? Would I be able to cut into the body?

"This will be your first patient. This person wanted you to learn from their body. They will teach you more than any textbook every could." - Dr. T

After a brief lecture about the thorax and what to expect in the thoracic cavity, we changed into our scrubs and headed to lab. The 6 of us stood around our body - it was covered in a green plastic sheet, but I knew underneath was a clear plastic bag, and the body was shrouded in cotton cloth. What parts of the body do we think of as being most "human?" The face. The hands. The feet.

I am nervous, but I am so grateful to have this opportunity, to stand where few can and to learn. My responsibility is to this patient, to my partners, and to my future patients.

"Your responsibility is to learn from this body the things that will help to save the lives of other people." - Dr. K

As a group, a medical team, we started by uncovering the feet and then the hands. We observed the age of the skin and the joints. The coloring was off. Preservatives. You could smell them.

We uncovered the face. This was the strangest thing I've ever done. It wasn't scary, but it was so unusual that it was only natural to feel very uncomfortable. This person is Asian. Small in stature, thick lips, heavy creases around the eyes. I thought about our trip to Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam - this person could have lived there. It became real.

Our group collectively guessed this person to be a 75 year old male, but after uncovering the entire body we were surprised to find a female. Her knees were bulging: arthritis. She did not have much fat at all - her legs and arms looked pretty good, even toned. Dr. K then reveiled that her age was 91! 91! I hope I look that good at 91!

We broke into our groups of 3 and I stayed to disect the breast, skin and pectoral region with 2 partners while the other group members went to learn about imaging. Then we flip flop. We will do this every day for the next 8 weeks. The three of us will teach the other group what we learn in lab and vice versa. We will all disect every day, for about an hour and a half each day - 3 hours total between both groups. We will learn about the entire body: every organ, muscle, nerve, vessel and bone.

Today we uncovered the pectoral muscles (major and minor) and found lots of great nerves, veins, arteries and connective tissue. We saw the striations of the muscle fibers and found where they connect to the bones.

The pectoralis major connects to the humerus to allow us to lift our arm. It's true. I saw it!