When the first sentence is...

"The head must be detached from the vertebral column to allow a posterior approach to the cervical viscera" you know it's going to be a difficult dissection. The cervical viscera includes the pharynx, esophagus, larynx, and trachea with associated muscles, nerves and vessels. I guess we need to actually see how the nose and mouth are connected to the lungs and stomach.

We're nearing the end of our dissection of a human cadaver and although it's still ridiculously interesting to literally discover the large and small intricacies of the human body... the disarticulation of the head makes me ready to call it a day. Should I even mention that part of the dissection calls for bisection of the head? "Saw through the skull from superior to inferior." Awesome. And by awesome, I mean ugh. Keep in mind that our lady still has her nose, eyes (well, one of them remains in it's socket... we did eyes last week), lips and tongue. I'm pretty sure at this point I should NOT mention that I cut up beef into cubes and stir-fried them for dinner tonight.

We started with the chest in late August, then the abdomen, lower limbs, back, and upper limbs in September, and now the head and neck in October. Times flies when you're identifying (and really trying your best to memorize) every single muscle, never, artery, vein, bone and joint in the human body.

This picture from the BodyWorlds exhibit is actually pretty much what our body looks like after detaching one of the attachment points of many of the muscles. FYI: your forearm (elbow to wrist) has 19 muscles. Wow.

My good friend Jenny and I went to see the BodyWorlds exhibit in Baltimore in February 2008 and at the time she was getting her doctorate in Physical Therapy. As we walked through she kept saying, "You're going to learn all about all of this stuff when you dissect the body and you're going to love it!" I really wish we could go back through the exhibit together, as Jenny is a practicing Physical Therapist here in Baltimore now, and enjoy it again with this huge knowledge base I now have to draw from.

These are the muscles of facial expression (occipitofrontalis, orbicularis oculi, orbicularis oris, zygomaticus major and minor, buccinator, levator labii superioris, and depressor anguli oris). They are innervated by branchiomotor branches of cranial nerve VII... the oh so super fun facial nerve. ... Just in case you're taking a test on that soon :)