Dissecting Bodies

Gross lab. The first day of lab I changed into my scrubs and I very apprehensively made my way into the lab. All five cadavers were there on the tables shrouded in white blankets. It was pretty creepy. My three lab partners and I took our positions around our cadaver donor and waited for the instructions to unwrap. Thankfully, the face was covered with a towel. So far, so good. I could look at the body without feeling faint or sick. Now onto actually dissecting the body. Looking from a close distance is totally different than actually coming into contact, but I successfully made it through the first lab.

The only casualty was getting sprayed in the eye with the rewetting solution by one of my lab partners, Jordan. He is still the one you have to be cautious around when he’s armed with the spray bottle! Now that we are all so accustomed to being in there, the atmosphere has changed. There is always some kind of music for entertainment, whether from the radio or from lab partner Kevin, who even gave us a nice rendition of a romantic ballad the other day. And then there are the little mishaps to find amusement in, like witnessing me trying to use a Stryker saw to cut off the clavicle. The darn thing almost got away from me and cut down the entire front side of the body! So at the end of each lab day, we close up the cadaver, change out of our horribly smelling scrubs and hope not to catch a whiff of cadaver as we continue to pass our day studying.