Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Cadavers

In my anatomy class we are going to be working with cadavers. I am both nervous and very excited about this. I have never seen a dead body up close; I really don't know how I will react. I don't have any problem with seeing surgery or blood or anything -- in fact, I thought that Katie's C-Section was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. The anatomy professor said that she picked up a new cadaver last week and that her name is Kitty. Her advanced biology class will actually do the dissection with the bone saw and all, but we get to inspect and memorize the parts of her body. Our lab midterm actually consists of us coming to the cadaver lab and seeing the cadaver with little flags on the body, and us having to name the different flagged parts.

Has anyone else taken anatomy? How did you do with the cadavers?

7 comments:

Lisa Lou said...

I've never dealt with a cadaver, but in high school, the smell of the fetal pigs turned my stomach. I think it was formaldyhyde?

Chris said...

i went on a date once to the BYU cadaver lab. It wasn't as weird as one might think. the muscles looked like beef jerky. There is no blood and the body is dried out, so it is hard to recognize as a human corpse. I don't think you will have any problems with it. It is unfortunate that cadavers are the only way to study it first-hand, because they are so processed. They should get you to the Salt Lake City trauma room or something and let you see what the insides look like fresh.

Katie Lewis said...

Chris-

Gross.

-Katie


Bryan-

I think it will be cool. Although I'm still curious what the family does for burial and that whole sort of thing. I hope you'll ask your professor or something.

-Katie

Patricia said...

Chris,

Who planned the date?

Kathy Haynie said...

I had a flashback of Advanced Biology in high school - dissecting cats - I imagine your experience will be much different. Please keep us updated.

Chris said...

I was meeting a girl for lunch. She was still in class at the lab, so I walked in and saw that it was very unstructured. I think it was a open-information session for students with questions.
Katie-
I read a book called Stiff that was all about cadavers in science. When you donate your body to science you cannot have any say in what your body will be used for. The bodies that BYU gets are probably not from Utah and might not even be from the mountain west. They ship bodies all over the place. The lucky cadavers go to universities for strict educational purposes. Others are used for safety tests. It is hard to test safety equipment accurately with synthetic bone and tissue, so some industries apply for and receive limbs and appendages to use in stress and blunt trauma tests. It is a pretty fascinating book. The reason I bring this all up is that the author mentioned that some cadavers are donated after the memorial service and then are returned (all gathered back together) for cremation or burial. I would imagine, though, that there are lots of different scenarios. I would like to hear what your professors have to say about what they know too, Bryan.

Bryan Lewis said...

I like the titles of Mary Roach's books: Stiff, Spook, Bonk. Ha.