Gross!….Anatomy
The smell in the anatomy lab defies description, but I’m going to try to explain it anyway. Imagine a chemical spill in a pickle factory that’s also a retirement home, then add a hint of your grandma’s attic. That's Formaldehyde. It’s a scent that doesn’t just enter your nose; it colonizes it. You shower thrice, and it still lingers. Lovely.
Walking into the Cadaver lab for the first time is a rite of passage. The air in the lab is always thick and cold (lab open 24/7); the smell is nauseating, and MS1 crowd is perma-anxious (remember, premeds never change). And then you see them. Lying on stainless steel tables, shrouded in plastic, are the cadavers. They are your first teachers. And they are very, very dead.
Our assigned cadaver, a gentleman who in life had a name, a family, and a favorite type of donut. Our group calls him Frank. By the way, real-life anatomy isn't anything like in the Netters. They’d presented anatomy as a neat, and orderly. The reality is more like a hoarder’s garage after an earthquake.
We were all so excited. The first cut is the strangest tbh. The skin didn’t part with the clean, satisfying zip I’d imagined. It was tough, resistant. It felt less like surgery and more like trying to carve a roast with a butter knife.
You, I, and everyone carries this…fat
And beneath the skin? Fat. Not the abstract concept of fat you see in books, but a tangible, greasy, shockingly yellow substance that coated our gloves. I ran an extra 3 miles on the treadmill after the first Anatomy lab experience. shieeeeet.
A few days later came the blunt dissection. Our professor, a man who clearly lost his sense of squeamishness, came over to show us how it was done. He introduced us to "blunt dissection," aka jamming your fingers into a dead guy and ripping his fat and muscles apart with all your might. It's anatomical vandalism, a process that makes you realize the human body is basically just a meat punching bag in the end. Gross…Anatomy, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Eventually, you develop a strange relationship with your cadaver (I have; I’m also probably abnormal). You learn quite a bit about their body; in fact, you find yourself having one-sided conversations with them. You vibe with your cadaver. "Sorry about that, my dude, totally meant to preserve that artery. My bad." Dirty humor abounds with your buddies. You find yourself making jokes that would get you thrown out of any regular social gathering, because in here, laughing is the only thing that keeps you from crying. #NoCap.
The anatomy lab also changes you. This incredibly generous person donated their body to science (I’m getting all emotional…since no one really reads these posts). What do I have to show for this ultimate act of anatomical altruism? For starters, a car that permanently smells like formaldehyde, a barely passing score on one of my tests, and a caffeine dependency. So yes, I’m going to spend more time in the lab.
Time to git good.
