Cadaver Lab!

They weren't kidding about the bare hands!!!!!

YUS!!!

I was the only person who took advantage of that, no surprise. My group (me, the other two kids from class, and a guy from the Salt Lake class) was "baptized by fire". We got to see the nearly-whole body first. He was an old man who had died of colorectal cancer. The instructor let us touch what we wanted and get familiar before we started.

I think I touched his intestine first. Then his lung. It was squishy, and smaller than I thought it'd be. I touched his liver, where the cancer had metastasized. I touched his heart. Then the teacher stepped in and showed us his entire digestive system, his different lung lobes, his carotid artery (and some nerves over there), his prostate, bladder, cricoid process, and then we held his heart. It was cool. It was covered in fat. Then we took off the layers of the skull and various matters, and we TOUCHED THE BRAIN! That was wicked cool! It felt darn near indescribable. Surprisingly firm and squiggly.

Then we went to another table to feel up some hearts. They were all smaller than I'd expected. So small. Mine was especially small. One had a pacemaker in it. Then we got some kidneys! So cute! Again, they seemed very small. One had nephritis.

I probably seemed like a know-it-all the entire time. Nearly every question he asked, I knew. Q: "What's this?" A: "pericardial sack". "How do you breathe?" A: "the diaphragm pulls air into the lungs." Q: "Which side is the left side of the heart?" A: "This one, because it's bigger and rounder." Q: "What's this?" A: "Adrenal glands." Q: "Can anyone tell me what this is?" A: "That's fascia!" I identified a dismembered trachea and a male hip. The trachea was easy, but the hip was a process. It had a gluteus maximums attached, and it was pretty fatty. I first identified a giant, hollow bone as a femur. By then, the illeac crest above itwas obvious. Then I identified it as male because the hip was narrower than a female's would be.

Or...I could've just noted the single teste hanging from it. *slow clap*

Anyway, this stuff came so easily, thank goodness! Not that I was being annoying about it, I always gave others a chance first, but it felt good to actually know stuff for once.

After the break, we got to see skin and it's three layers, a dismembered arm and leg (muscle and tendons look just like uncooked chicken). Femoral artery! That was cool. It's so close to the skin!

They saved it for the end, but they brought out a covered jar in which we eventually saw a 30 year old fetus; aged 6 months. It was SO CUTE! He was absolutely prefect! Little fingers, little feet with little toes...so cute.

The last thing we did was stand in a line and hold a stomach and intestines all unraveled. It would be the class picture, if we could take pictures.

It was such a fun time! Cool experience, for sure.