I can't believe....

I forgot to mention the fact that I got to go to VCOM, a DO medschool about 5 minutes from here on the other side of campus on Halloween eve. It was essentially a tour that we did in place of an AED meeting. We had med students give us a tour of the school and answer questions about what they do. It was really interesting but my FAVORITE part was being taken into cadaver lab.

I intially thought I'd be really scared, but walking into a cold room with 45 cadavers doesn't give you much time to think let alone be scared. It was weird, I walked in there and it didn't feel awkward or weird to me. I just kind of took it all in and was very numb to the exprience. What I really found kind of disheartening is the fact that under these body bags, the cadavers were not whole. Normally, on TV you see the outline of a head, torso, and limbs but I guess by now they are so far into cadaver lab that most of these bodies have been mutilated. All we could really make of what was under the body bags was a torso. It was very surreal to be in there and think to yourself... "these are human beings."

Anyway, as we moved past the bodies I could see organs stored in clear containers in what I assumed was formaldehyde. It was pretty interesting. I also noticed that the lab itself did not smell bad at all which is amazing really. I've heard a lot of bad stories about people throwing up after going to lab because the smell of formaldehyde was so overwhelming. It wasn't bad at all. It smelled very sterile and it was really cold - it kind of smelled like a hospital. The ventilation system in there was state of the art and the dissection tables had vents coming out of the bottom and would rescirculate air 15 times an hour.

As we made our way to the other side of the room, our tour guide stops and picks up a brain and spinal cord that the students were able to preserve (using the same methods as the guy who did the anatomy exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston) and he just passed it around like it was no big deal. It was such a great experience. I left there knowing that I really want to do this. I left excited about cadaver lab - excited to explore the complexities of the human body.