Monday, August 31, 2009

Medical School Anatomy: Another reason to not smoke and to workout

Today was lung dissection, and I discovered another reason why people should not smoke and should workout:
Last session, we took out the saw and bone cutter and cut through the clavicle and the ribs. Sawing was pretty difficult, but it was nice to hear the last crack of the ribs. When we took off the front of the rib cage, we discovered two huge lungs that were black. Ah...smoker? How unfortunate. I also managed to cut the diaphram when I thought it was the parietal pleura.

Our role today was to take out the lungs and check it out. We looked at our lung and wondered why it was so small compared to another table's, which slipped right out. Well, according to our manual, the lung should slip right out if you cut the bronchi and the nerves/arteries/etc. After cutting all the nerves, arteries, nerves, muscles, diaphrams, and whatever...I decided to be careful and use my fingers to pry the lung away from the thoracic cavity. After a little prying, the lung still refused to budge, so we moved to using scissors. Soon, scissors didn't fit into the whole, and we moved to scalpel. Before long, we were digging our fingers as deep as possible (I'm sure I got cadaver juice on my wrists), and we pulled as hard as possible. Actually, SW pulled on the lung in one direction while I pulled the body in the other direction - all to no avail. Stupid lung! Why won't you come out?!!! We decided that after this, we should work out for the sole purpose of pulling out organs during anatomy. With more cutting, and eventually moving to using a chisel, we pulled the lung out - in 3 pieces. oops.

There you have it, another reason not to smoke: make med school student dissection not a test of how fit we are.

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