Melissa's Bio

Melissa's Diary

Anatomy lab seems to take over my time when my group is dissecting. We are scheduled to spend 4 hours/week when we are dissecting (plus 2 hours/week reviewing with the non-dissecting partners), but it invariably takes longer. I've been surprised that this process hasn't really bothered me so far. Our cadaver is a man who was in his late 60s and died of a possible pulmonary embolism (PE). We have noticed that he has a scar from open heart surgery, which isn't too surprising since we were also told that he had atherosclerotic coronary disease (ASCD). At this point we have his face covered (to keep it from drying out) so it is easier to disassociate myself from the fact that he was someone's son, husband, father, brother, friend.

We've been dissecting the neck, which has tons of structures that we will have to identify. Its difficult for me to get going too quickly on the dissecting because I'm concerned about damaging some structure that we'll need later. There are others in the class who go ahead full steam and seem to do okay, but some end up missing multiple structures (a common motto is "when in doubt, cut it out"). Unfortunately, we began the neck with structures missing or damaged already. Our guy had been embalmed through both sides of his neck, but apparently more so on ours. Many of the structures were an unnatural dark brown color and the major vessels had been cut. Considering that I'm neurotic about accidentally damaging structures myself, I've found this quite frustrating! We spend time trying to follow the dissection manual only to be left with seemingly unidentifiable structures. Because of this, my partner and I have been trying to study off of the other side of the body.

Outside of anatomy, the other classes are going smoothly. We have our first exams (anatomy lab and lecture) next Monday. I figure that that's when I'll really find out what I've gotten myself into!

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