Cuttin' for the very first time

We began anatomy this week, and unlike the class at my undergrad, we get to do the dissections ourselves.  Each group of 8 medical students is in charge of one cadaver, and we learn everything from them--starting with surface anatomy and working all the way down to the deepest muscles and skeleton.

Medical school usually begins with anatomy because that is the foundation for all of the rest of the knowledge that follows.  The donors who gave us their bodies have facilitated this for us, and it's a humbling thing to dissect another human body.  We learned a little about each of our donors (age at death, what they did for a living, family members who survived them), and their initials.

*This paragraph deals more directly with dissection.  I've tried to keep it from being terribly graphic, but this is a warning for those who don't want to read it*
Our donor was a female, and we began by making t-incisions in her back.  The first step is removal of the skin and the tissues directly below it--this process is called flaying, and is one of the few parts of dissection that involve a scalpel.  You pull on the corner of the skin, and use the scalpel to cut the connective tissue that attaches the skin to the muscle below.  Most of the rest of dissection is called "blunt dissection", and is done with a blunt metal probe, scissors, and your fingers.

We follow particular instructions, found in a book called Grant's Dissector.  We dissect MWF, with four of the eight people in our group being there and doing the dissecting.  We rotate through on a two on, two off basis, which is done in such a way that on any given day, two people who are there were present at the previous dissection.  This helps keep continuity, which is useful.

By the end of next week, we'll have worked our way down the arms and to the hand.  Pretty neat stuff.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask!  Also, there are videos on Youtube (search "human dissection") that you can view if you're interested in seeing what the process looks like.  Because it's not the sort of thing that you want little Timmy to stumble on, it requires that you have a Youtube site login to view them.  By the way, it's not a gory process, as bodily fluids have been replaced with formaldehyde and other preservatives.