I really feel like anatomy deserves it’s own blog post. So many things happen in that lab, it would be impossible to document them all. But every now and then something really crazy happens that stands out. And I am not just talking about the freezer, which still hasn’t been fixed. It’s nasty.
Anyway.
I feel like I should start with my very first anatomy lab, because it provides such a contrast. My first lab was simply skinning the forelimb of a dog, in preparation of going over all the muscles of the thoracic limb. At this point, it had been over 4 years since I had dissected anything in a lab, so I was a little nervous. And I wanted to make a good impression on my anatomy group so they wouldn’t think I was a dumb blonde. (I have given them reason to think that at several points, most notably when I asked if upper motor neurons were motor neurons or sensory neurons. In my defense, that was at like 10:00 at night after 4 consecutive nights of studying, and my brain was fried.)
So I may have been a little... overenthusiastic, shall we say, when attaching the scalpel blade for that first time. And in my eagerness to look like I knew what I was doing, I pushed a little too hard so the blade sliced right through the packet and into my index finger. I have to at least be grateful it was a scalpel, because it was a clean cut. But it hurt like hell.
And what a great first impression to make to my new anatomy partners, trying to skin a dog while having my glove fill up with blood. It was not a pretty picture.
It is completely unrealistic to go in there and assume that you will never make a mistake. Even today, 3 months into classes, I am still making mistakes. (At least this time I didn’t cut myself, however.) That is just part of life as a vet student. You are always wrong. Always. Even if being wrong means that you weren’t completely right, or you were incomplete. And just when you think you finally have something figured out you realize you never really knew anything at all.
It’s tough, and it takes getting used to. But at the end of it all, it is such an amazing feeling to sit down and be able to ramble off all of the nerves of the abdomen and pelvic limb and their innervations, and just have people stare at you in astonishment. Try it, it’s fun. My particular favorite is to go to the gym and start listing all the nerves innervating the muscles I’m working (or the ones that are hurting) and then laugh at the guys as they do completely pointless workouts that won’t actually help them at all. It is, pathetic as it is, one of the highlights of my days.
But back to anatomy lab. It’s amazing how you see yourself changing through the lab. And I don’t just mean by actually gaining knowledge and sounding professional when you talk, although that’s cool too. The little things change too. For instance, I now hate cats. And I used to love cats. But you can’t find ANYTHING on a cat. And I mean anything. One of my favorite moments is still, when dissecting nerves in the thorax, my TA told me to pull on the nerves with my probe. He said nerves don’t break, because they’re stretchy, but fascia will. So when in doubt, stretch it out.
Well, let me tell you something. Nerves do NOT stretch in the cat. At all. They definitely break. And then what? Here you are trying to study something literally the size of a strand of hair, and it snaps on you. And then it somehow disappears into the muscle like it’s purposefully hiding from you. So now what?
Nerves are the worst, but arteries are not much better. And neither was the abdomen, which at this point has pretty much completely rotted out, making things indistinguishable. There is just nothing good about cats in anatomy. Nothing. And I have to be honest, it does make you begin to dislike them in general when you have to spend so many hours frustrated and fighting with them.
Dogs are better only in that they’re bigger and it’s easier to see things. But the way they teach you in anatomy is to have you read a dissection guide and find everything on you’re own. We’re not really taught anything. So every structure we find has us saying, “Well, I think this could be it... I think.”
I think. That is the story of my life in anatomy.
It wasn’t so bad with the muscles, but do you have any idea just how many nerves are in a dog? Let me give you a clue. A lot. So when you are looking for one specific nerve it is pretty much impossible to tell if you found the right one or not. And don’t even get me started on nerves on transverse sections. They are the bane of my existence. My crowning moment of glory was to be able to find the vagosympathetic trunk dorsal to the common carotid artery. And let’s be honest, if the arteries didn’t fill with red latex, I wouldn’t have been able to find it.
But through all of the frustration and anger and anti-cat plotting, lab can actually be a lot of fun. You have to look for the little things, things that probably would not even be as funny if we weren’t all so exhausted all the time. Things like spilling intestines or making a complete fool out of yourself by telling the TA you were only testing him by saying a random bit of fascia was the sternothyroideus muscle.
And that’s what it all comes down to, really. Because if you didn’t know how to laugh at yourself and your mistakes it would really run you into the ground quickly. But at least I can put on and take off scalpel blades now.
Learning the muscles of the forelimb
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