For today -
Neuroanatomy I - 2 hours -
HECK! - I just realized my notebook is sitting under my cadaver - on the bottom part of the dissecting table. Well ...so much for any specific recap -
We're still hitting the basics in neuro and will be getting to the specific cranial nerves and pathways in about a week
Biochemistry II - 1 hour -
Here we're delving a little deeper into the 10 (or 11) step pathway of glycolysis. ...learning the details between conversions from fructose-1,6-phosphate to glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate to 1,3-bisphosphoglycerate and other exciting reactions - I really need to learn that stuff - we've got a quiz this Friday!
Physiology - 1 hour
still basic preliminary stuff here - I'll tell you what was amazing to me ...realizing the membrane of a cell wall is a fluid structure! it's not like our skin or anything else I ever imagined it to be. the membrane is a bi-lipid layer - basically two layers of fat cells but those fat cells are free to move around. quite fascinating.
The way to think of the membrane is like a sea of lipid (fat) cells with iceburgs of protein floating around. There is about one protein structure for every 50 molecules of fat. The protein acts as gatekeepers to the cell, only allowing certain things inside our cells.
Memorial Service -
Physiology was cut a little short so we could attend a very nice memorial service for the families of people who donated their bodies for medical study. It was a shirt & tie event complete with speakers and a bag pipe player. At the end students handed out carnations to the family members in attendence. It was a very classy operation.
Neuroanatomy Lab - 1 hour
This class was FASCINATING! OMG - not only were we playing around with actual human spinal cords, at the end of class we looked at cross sections of the spinal cord and the LARGEST part of the spinal cord is no bigger than the width of two standard size pencil erasers - absolutely fascinating!
We're spending a full two semesters to learn all the details of that little thing which scarcely is 1/2" wide at it's widest point. But, many of the things we are learning are down at the level of the individual nerves that traverse the spinal cord so we are at a cellular level.
Gross Anatomy II Prosection - 1 hour
This was another fun class. This is where we sit in an auditorium with television monitors all around and a camera zoomed in on whatever the teacher is dissecting. He first shows us on a cadaver referred to as the "prosection" body so we have an idea of what we'll be doing on our own cadavers. We're working in the neck region ...and there are a lot of regions in the neck.
Gross Anatomy II Lab - 2 hours
We're working on the anterior triangle of the neck. It's not a very large region but our Neuroanatomy teacher told us she came up with around 48 different structures in that area ....yikes!
It takes some time to build up a tolerance to the cadavers and this was the time we removed the covering of the head which made it very difficult for one of the ladies in our dissection group. I took it upon myself to clean the face of our cadaver up the best I could figuring if it was a member of my family then I would want to show similar respect. I was thinking this person is only going to have a face for another two weeks before it's completely cut off so it should at least be as nice as possible.
I don't know. It's a very somber and serious matter. I'm just doing the best I can with it and learning all I can from the experience. We owe that to the donors and their families.
This cadaver I'm working on now has an orange bucket beneth it (next to my notebook) which means anything that gets cut out goes in that bucket so when we are done the entire body and remains get cremated and returned to the family.
It was a long day - the ceremony took the place of our lunch so it was a 9 hour non-stop day.
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