An Update from The Gross Lab

Most folks are interested in gross anatomy stories...and who wouldn't be right? We dissect real people which is still crazy for me to think about.

Over the past couple weeks we have opened the chest (many times referred to as "cracking the chest").  All this means is that we used a bone saw and cut through the sternum and some ribs and removed them so we could get to the heart and lungs.  If you are a heart patient, do not fret, when you have surgery they don't removed your sternum and ribs and I'm sure cardiothoracic surgeons do a far better job than we did cutting the sternum.

We looked at the lungs and cut them out to get a view of them from all sides. Our cadaver had lung cancer and believe me it was obvious, we didn't even have to ask our supervisor because the lungs were black on the back side of them and were speckled with tar on the front side.  The cancerous tissues was tough and hard (normal lungs should be fleshy colored and soft).  Our cadaver only had a small amount of normal lung tissue to see.  If you had seen these lungs you'd never want to pick up a cigarette again! It was quite a site.

Next we looked at the heart which was clearly enlarged, it looked like a nerf ball in the chest (your heart should only be the size of your fist).  Her heart was much too big which could have been do to the cancer or coronary artery disease.  We examined all the vessels on the outside of the heart (these are the coronary arteries-the arteries that supply the heart muscle itself) and we opened each of the four chambers to see valves and a variety of other structures with strange latin names.

This past week we opened up the abdominal cavity and looked at several organs: stomach,liver,large intestine (colon), small intestine, and spleen.  There is a interesting structure called the greater omentum which is simply a large fat like structure that hands like an apron over the abdominal organs.  This structure's purpose is to wall off infection.  Our cadaver's greater omentum was VERY thick which meant our lady most likely had some kind of infection prior to her death.

Our teachers kept telling us to be careful not to puncture the bowl b/c if we did would certainly know it and would have to sew it up because we would have a big mess on our hands.  My group did indeed end up puncturing the bowl but fortunately it was a tiny hole and I sutured it up quickly before we had too much of a mess.

Thanks for reading :)

Kelly

I can't even remember my kids names....

One of the guys in my class had his 4th child at the beginning of this semester and I can't figure out how he's doing it.  Today he told me he can't remember their names anymore..lol (of course he was joking, sort of)

The 7th week of class eneded last week and we have a biochem and histology test (histology = the study of various tissues at the microscopic level) tomorrow at 8am. I'm so ready for Christmas :)

Part of the reason I like writing this blog is to try to feel like I'm still connected in some way to every day life, many of my classmates and I do feel like we've been sequestered away--- still realizing of course the priveldge to be here in the first place.

Many have asked me: Is medical school fun?

Well, "fun" is probably not the word I would use to describe the experience thus far.  "Worth the work" is a better phrase, I know this craziness and fatique is temporary (even though I find myself crying on the phone to my parents frequently about how tired I am) and the end result is still real enough to me to push through.

Thanks for reading and keeping me connected to the reason my classmates and I started all this in the first place-"to serve families and friends through medicine".

Kelly