This may creep some people out...

Today was our first day of anatomy lab. I've actually been mentally debating (though debating out loud would be amusing) how much to tell everyone about this particular experience. This uncertainty is due, in part, to my own vascillating feelings about this. I go back and forth about how exactly I feel about all this. I do remember when my dad first told me that medical school involved the dissection of a cadaver. I was sooo excited and I couldn't have been more than 12. However, in the last couple weeks, taking anatomy has not only become possible, but it was creeping ever-closer. And, I began to wonder if I would really be as excited about this opportunity as I had originally thought. I mean this is a person, with a name and a life, and I would be making cuts into his or her cold dead body. Anyway, back to the debate in my head. Part of me wants to "shield" my friends from all the details because I know people find the idea creepy. However, another part of me thinks that it's better to talk about what I'm doing, because otherwise it seems like I'm slowly being seperated from the general populace. I understand that there is some point to desensitizing physicians so they don't scream everytime they touch a dead human body, but I never before had realized how going through this whole process changes you, and to be honest I kinda liked who I was before ;)

But seriously, I've decided that I'm going to fill you guys in on some of the things I'm doing, because I think it's important. And, if you don't want to read it, then don't ;)

Ok, so today, we started anatomy and let me tell you, even though the chemistry building at college smelled because the bio department worked with fetal pigs every spring, it is not even close to the smell in the anatomy lab. Why? Well, becuase people are bigger than pigs. And, because there are over 35 cadavers in one room and that's a lot of embalming fluid.

The actual dissections were just some basic skin removal and breast and some muscle dissections for the mostpart, but since tomorrow is the lungs, today we had to remove the rib case. No one else wanted to do it, and I didn't mind so I manned (or womaned?) the saw. I know this may be random, but cutting off a rib case reminded me of the 3rd alien movie, when Ripley is making sure Newt wasn't holding an alien baby when she died...