Cadavers and Zambian Vocal Groups

Today was a rather interesting day...

Zambian Vocal Group:

I went to chapel today and we had this Zambian Vocal Group perform. It was amazing!! Seriously. It was so cool. I was on the edge of my seat and giddy with excitement. James was sitting next to me and was thoroughly mesmerized as well! They all had on these matching African shirt things. They sang in 3 different African languages as well as in English. They also had no instruments, but they made the sounds of various instruments vocally. It was so cool. Man, I am so glad I went to chapel today! :)

Cadavers:

Yep, today was my first cadaver lab for anatomy! It was quite the experience I must say! We had about 30 minutes or so of introduction/basic lab rules and then we were lead into the other room where the bodies were awaiting us. It was pretty surreal at first I must say. We have 2 cadavers. The male died at age 84 from prostate cancer. The female died at age 63 from lung cancer. I think this is going to be really cool to see once we get into that region of dissection. I am looking forward to seeing the visual affect cancer had on each of these organs. Today we dissected the arm (above the elbow, or olecranon) and the leg (above the knee or patella). It was tight. Like I said, at first it was certainly surreal. However, that is all in your head. Once you stop focusing on the fact that you are cutting into a dead person you will quickly be able to detach yourself and focus on the task at hand. I know this sounds a little odd, but it is true. We were all assured countless times that we would quickly forget that we were working on a person, and sure enough we did. I found it rather easy to detach. Today was neat in that it was an exploratory mission. We were just cutting through the skin and the fat and the tissue. We were discovering muscles and nerves and tendons and arteries! It was so insane. The human body is so complex. In the leg we found the femoral artery! That might have been the highlight. It was so big and so thick. It looked like a very large straw. No wonder people can die pretty quickly if that is severed. The muscles in the thigh also looked very much like beef jerky! Good thing I never ate beef jerky in the first place... ha. There were some not so thrilling parts to this lab. Cutting through so much fat was disgusting! The cadavers we have are not heavy by any means, but they both had so much fat on their bodies. I couldn't believe it. It was not the most pleasant task. Oh, and worst of all... THE SMELL! Oh it was awful. Being trapped in a room for 3 hours with the overwhelming smell of fermaldahide (sp?) is awful. Blah. And, it was leaking everywhere. The body would ooze this stuff and it would get all over the floor, and occasionally your clothes. I think the odor is trapped in my nose hairs permanently! Ew. But, all in all it was a very positive experience. I am completely overwhelmed with the amount of information I need to learn, and so I am stressed, but I liked lab. It was a very neat experience. Plus, I think it is cool that not every school gets a cadaver lab, yet OBU has one! Ha. Go figure!