anatomy lab: day fin

Yesterday was my last day of anatomy lab. (Well, it was more like the last day of dissecting because I will be going in there to study this weekend.) Anyway, we had to finish with something interesting right? So, we cut the cadaver's head in half with a hacksaw...right down the middle, between the eyes and down the nose. This was quite more labor intensive than cutting the skull to remove the brain because it needed to be done by hand and had to go through soft tissue structures, such as skin, tongue, and nasal cartilage, as well as the skull and mandible (jawbone). It did provide a very unique and interesting view of the nose an mouth to study. A few interesting things that I learned:

-Your tongue is HUGE! It has all kinds of muscle in it and goes way down your throat. Even when you stick our your tongue, you probably only see 75% of it.

-Your nose is HUGE! You can only stick your finger in about 10% of it. (Our professor even had a diagram showing us exactly how far in it could go. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to post here.)

-Our lady had some teeth left...about 7 or 8. Pretty impressive for a 98 year old...especially considering I've seen the dentist I worked for put full dentures on a 28 year old.

-The prosected heads in the plastic tub do not come from any of the cadavers that we have been working on. I was telling my mom about it on the phone a few days back and she wondered where they came from and where the rest of the bodies were. I didn't know, so I asked the professor about it in lab the other day. Apparently, sometimes the whole body can not be used or the family only wishes to donate certain portions. So the school can get ahold of certain portions to study. (My roommate told me that when she was in anatomy lab, they had tubs with prosected arms and legs). Because the head and other parts are separate from the rest of the body, they are not returned to the family when the school is done with. He said that the prosections can be used for quite a long time, but eventually get too old. At this point, they are cremated and as my professor put it "sprinkled about to help the trees grow".

-The professor also informed our class that every summer, inevitably, the air conditioning in the anatomy lab gives out. Considering that some of the bodies are already starting to smell a bit (more so than they already do) and these are the bodies that will be used by the PA students this summer, I certainly hope I am far far away when this happens! Arizona summer of 100+ degrees and cadavers without AC = NASTINESS.

That's all for now. I suppose now that anatomy lab is over, blog posts will be a lot less disgusting, and probably much more dull. Sorry.