Friday, April 18

it's amazing the things you walk in on

Do not read this if you are eating or get woozy. I arrive at school to look over stuff for my exam tomorrow and wo and behold what do I see? A corpse on her belly, face down, severed head dripping fluid into a bucket on the floor. Her back side is completely flattened due to no movement (get it?, move mama move) and on the table beside her are freaking power tools. I was hoping to be able to take part in the actual cutting but didn't know they were doing it today. He said it usually takes 3 hours, but did it in 1 thanks to all the students help.
When I opened the door I think it surprised them a bit, as they had already cut the skull and were in the process of pulling out the brain. Should I describe the sounds, sights, and smells? Gladly! John (the instructor) had a phillips head screwdriver and was actually wedging it in between her skull and brain, he was sweating and pulling back and forth. The ripping of the duramater (outer most protective layer) sounded like pulling wet weeds out of soft soil. It didn't smell any different than a normal anatomy classroom and the color of the brain was the same as the preserved specimens we have seen before.
The leaking fluid was cerebral spinal fluid and the spinal cord looked surprisingly small, it was white and textured like celery. As John finally wedged the brain out of the skull he had to cut the optic chiasma (wikiP it dude!) and after that it was free from skull (kind of like mind/body seperation ha ha) then he handed it to a student who stood there holding it for about 4 minutes. Ha ha imagine that, here take this brain while I look at the eye sockets in this skull. I didn't see her face but the inside of her skull didn't look different than the older skull specimens. Apart from being wet, the skull looked like any you'd find in one of those mega chain stores that pop up all over town at a certain time in the fall when colors of orange and black abound.
I feel that I should say something about the cadaver business, because it is a very legit one that is mucho importante for us humans to survive. As people donate their bodies to science they are preserved, much like they do in the empire that we call funeral. And after about 2 years of students participating in out of this world experiences like the aforementioned ones in this fancy blog, they get reunited in the celestial kingdom to live with their earthly families forever and eternity.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i hope i wasn't the only one to laugh when you said "phillips head screwdriver" because..umm..not to point out the obvious but he was using a phillips head to umm..open up the head.....yeah....