Meet Stanley

So today was my first ever human dissection. I spent quite a bit of time yesterday and this morning worrying that I might puke, faint or tear up. I was afraid that I'd freak out when we made the first incision through the -skin. But I didn't. :) In fact, right after lab I texted one of my friends (who oh-so-thoughtfully sent me a note this morning to wish me luck!) and said "That might have been the coolest thing I've ever done". That dissection was absolutely incredible.

So if you'd like to nerd out (and maybe gross out) for a second... we dissected Stanley's back today (Stanley's not his real name, its the name we gave him at the beginning of the lab). Cutting through the skin was a little weird, but once the skin was pulled back and the fat cut away... musculature is breath taking. I honestly can't put into words how awe inspiring it was to actually FEEL and SEE what its like inside a person (and this is just the back! Just wait till we get to internal organs!) There was also something really satisfying about cutting away the subcutaneous fat and fascia (which just looks like a bunch of yellow gunk) and finding perfectly ordered muscle striations underneath (someone more philosophical than I am can find some sort of Jesus analogy in there I'm sure...). Finally, there's something also satisfying about stepping back and admiring your handy work. Looking at the dissected back (we dissected deep on one side- to find underlying muscles and superficially on the other side to show big muscles like the trapezius and latissimus dorsi) and knowing that our hands did all that... that felt good, it felt like we really accomplished something. Which was a nice change because for the most part the first week of med school has felt more like this:
http://whatshouldwecallmedschool.tumblr.com/post/28985228486/trying-to-keep-up-the-first-week-in-medical-school

So overall, today was pretty fabulous. I can't WAIT to do the heart, lungs and brain (Stanley's cause of death and medical conditions should make these really interesting...).Who knows, maybe I will end up being a surgeon, since apparently I really like cutting things open to see whats inside :)
Only negatives for today (and the first two negatives are really more like fun facts):
1. My scrubs are too big (no surprise there...) had to roll them up so they don't drag in cadaver juice
2. I have to wear my glasses in lab because apparently prolonged exposure to formalin with soft contacts in can make them fuse to your eyes.
3. I spent 3 hrs on biochem tonight. Chem nerds, take a moment with me here: conceptually, enzyme kinetics makes perfect sense. I understand conceptually what happens when you vary enzyme, substrate and inhibitor concentrations. I understand the effects of altering environmental conditions. So why the hell do I need the Michealson-M...whatever equation? and that horrible graph where everything is an inverse (I think the y axis is 1/Vi and the x axis is 1/Km... or something like that). Math and graphs make life so confusing. If anyone can explain to me why I need to know these (other than "because its on the test") it'd be much appreciated.