Memorial Service

On Friday after our final exam for ACE, we had a memorial service for our cadavers. As far as I know, all med schools have some form of service at the end of their anatomy class to recognize and pay tribute to the donors' amazing contribution to our education. Our service was pretty short, and only our class and some faculty was present (at some schools, they invite the families of the cadavers as well). The faculty asked students to volunteer to read some remarks, about 2 minutes each, and I was one of the students that offered to read. Here is a copy of what I wrote for anyone that's interested in reading it.



I know how exhausted we all are from this long week of studying, so I want to keep my comments brief. I know that everyone is itching to get out of here and either take a nap, start partying, or start getting ahead for physiology... just kidding, I hope.

Any and all of us can attest to the greatness that is Frank Netter. In fact, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have passed this class without him and his atlas. But a drawing, no matter how detailed, can't compare to seeing and touching the real thing in front of you. How many times have we all struggled through TBLs without anything really clicking ... until you get to the lab and you finally have your lightbulb moment where everything just sort of clicks because you can actually see how it all fits together?

Without people willing to give their bodies to science, to students like us, we would never see that. If we didn't have dissections, then for every model that I would look at, I would always think, "Well how is that the same, and how is it different from in a real body?" But because of our cadavers, we know.

How odd to never know a person in life, but to know every in and out of his body - to know more about his physical structure than anyone who knew him his whole life ever will. And yet we don't really know them at all. I know that the cadavers are anonymous for good reason, but I can't help but wonder who they were when they were alive. It's hard to say thank you to someone you don't know and someone you'll never know. To someone whose family didn't get to have a burial service for their loved one so that we, 180 strangers (plus all the dental students), could have a learning experience.

Our relationship with our cadavers is really no relationship at all. And yet, I feel close enough to my cadaver to call him MY cadaver. He, and the rest of our cadavers, gave us the opportunity for this quintessentail med school school experience, and for that they will always be remembered.


info on donating your body to science

Things Could Always Be Worse?

This exam week is really the exam week to end all exam weeks (hah, just try using "exam week" more times than me in a single sentence). Yesterday we had our Anatomy Unit IV exam (head and neck), coming up on Friday is our Anatomy shelf exam (basically a national, standardized final - see this post if you want to know more of my thoughts on shelf exams), and then the following Monday is our final for Ethics, Humanism, and Professionalism.

This is by far the busiest week in terms of tests that I have had so far in med school. BUT before you start feeling tooooo bad for me, I look to other med schools to make myself feel better.


NJMS has a block schedule, which means we really only take one major class at a time. Just as a reminder (in case for some weird reason you haven't memorized every single word I've ever written in the blog), our first block included MGM, or Molecular and Genetic Medicine (basically biochemistry) plus a Physician's Core class of Medical Interviewing.

Our second block, which we are finishing up right now, is ACE (Anatomy, Cell Biology, and Embryology - with Histology thrown in there too, but apparently it doesn't deserve it's own letter in the title) with a Physician's Core class of Ethics, Humanism, and Professionalism, or EHP. People really freaking love mnemonics in med school.

Coming up next is Physiology with Physical Exam.


But people I know at other med schools take alllll of their classes at once. Yes, they move slower than us in each subject (because the class will last the whole year), but it's still like, 7 classes they have to be able to keep straight at once. And come exam week - now that is an exam week that makes my exam week from hell look like the easiest exam week ever (woo, beat my record!).


Obviously, there are pros and cons to both a block schedule and a regular schedule (for instance, some schools have a systems-based curriculum, so in every class they will be learning about the heart at the same time - the biochemistry behind it, how it develops in the embryo, the anatomy of it, how it works in physiology, drugs and diseases related to it in pharmacology - and that's sort of a cool way to learn).


But come exam week, I am VERY happy with our block schedule. Not only do we rarely have more than one exam at a time, but we can also actually enjoy ourselves for a night or two after an exam instead of struggling to catch up in all the other classes we abandoned while cramming for the exam for that one class.

Quotes from an Anatomy Professor

"If you put parathyroid as an answer on the test, I will hunt you down and smack you."

That is because the parathyroid glands are small, easily destroyable (during dissection of a cadaver), and behind the thyroid so it would be pretty impossible for the professors to tag it for the practical.

Who knew professors could have a sense of humor?

The Non-Vacation Vacation

Now that we're one week back into classes, have you been wondering what a first year med student does with her first real break from medical school? Does she:

A) study, because it's not really vacation since another unit of anatomy started Monday?

B) spend lots of time with family and try to (pretty unsuccessfully, stupid snowstorm) fit in seeing friends she hasn't seen in the last four months?

C) read a book called Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers?

Or, obviously... drum-roll please...

D) all of the above!

Everyone pause and take a minute to think, "What a weirdo - who reads a book about cadavers in their free time?" Ok good, moving on.

From the back cover, the book "visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries and tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them." Just some of the topics include cadavers being used in first-year anatomy labs, in seminars for surgery practice, for vehicle safety crash tests, and for other very odd things like medical cannibalism and crucifixion experiments.


There was also a whole chapter on crimes of anatomy. Apparently, dead bodies used to be a pretty hot commodity, and plenty of morally questionable men made a good living in the 19th century out of body snatching - literally stealing bodies from recently dug graves and then selling them to anatomists or universities to use for dissections. Two men, William Burke and William Hare, really take the prize for going the extra mile though - they weren't content with just stealing already-dead bodies; they also murdered guests that stayed in Hare's lodging house (everyone needs a day job) and then sold those cadavers to Dr. Robert Knox of Edinburgh University.

I found the book to be equal parts creepy, funny, and informative - probably the same three adjectives that could be used to describe the author's personality.

The Ugly: Cadavers Are Full of Sh*t

Literally. We found this out the hard way when our cadaver's colon was accidentally cut into. It's not that it was surprising - what else would be in there, right? But it's really an unpleasant smell, and definitely an unpleasant consistency. So unfortunately, my group did not get to do the last dissection; we just followed along with other groups. The professors thought that it would be better to keep the cadaver closed rather than continuing to move things around inside and let more of the colon contents ooze out. I would have to agree.


Other than that, I have exactly three complaints when it comes to dissecting:

#1. You get starving during dissections. Why is that a complaint? Because it creeps me out that after looking into an opened human body for two hours I need to go home and immediately eat a gigantic meal - especially when some professors make meat jokes constantly ("ahh, there is a nice brisket" or "look, you found flank steak - delicious with garlic"). It's weird. And while I can't really look at meat the same way anymore, it's unfortunately still very delicious.

#2. Dissecting is exhausting. Even having just one two-hour (sometimes shorter, sometimes longer) lab knocks you out for the rest of that day. You come home from lab, shower, eat your gigantic meal, and then usually pretend to do work until it's an acceptable time to go to bed. And by pretend to do work, I mean have your book open in front of you while you watch TV or play stupid games on the internet. Studying by osmosis works, right?

#3. Dissecting is uncomfortable every time I'm reminded (especially if it's unexpectedly) that I'm working with what was once a person with a life and a story. The body hair and fingernails agitated me the most. Everything else about the body just seems fake. A cadaver doesn't bleed, and embalmed skin doesn't really feel like a real person's skin, so it's easy to believe that it's not a real person. Or at least easy not to think about it. But when a loose hair gets stuck on your glove, or you accidentally brush against a sharp nail - there's no difference between a cadaver's or your lab partner's, and that is a very uncomfortable feeling that will definitely give you the chills. The hands in general were also very discomforting, for reasons that I'm not sure I know how to put into words.


For me, dissecting was such a weird mix of needing to objectify but wanting to personalize (anyone who knows me, or has at least read my post on assigning emotions to human organs, knows I like to make up stories about everything), and finding that balance could be tough. In the same vein (pun very much intended), I have mixed feelings about not getting to do the head and neck dissections. On one hand, I feel cheated that our med school class is the first year not to get to do it. But on the other hand, I wonder how well I would really be able to handle it.

Meet Tag

My dissecting group of 3 (half of my 6-person TBL team) got lucky with an "easy" cadaver. He was a skinny man and in great shape - all of his muscles are big and incredibly well-defined, and therefore easy to identify. Easy, of course, is a relative word, since the first few times you look into a body (ok, every time so far) everything looks the same - turns out it's not nicely color-coded like the pictures in our books.

So during one of the first dissections, we were asking one of the professors where a certain structure was. He quickly pointed to what we were looking for and said, "See, there it is! Whomp, there it is, whomp whomp, like the Run-DMC song!" So since everything in our body was so easy to find (and because with every muscle we identified we could say "whomp there it is"),we decided to call our cadaver Run-DMC. But after some careful, peer-reviewed internet research, we discovered it is not Run-DMC but Tag Team who sings that song - oops, now it's public - I have no music knowledge. So, moral of the story, we call our cadaver Tag.

This name also works because half of our Anatomy exams are "practical" - where the professors tag a structure on the cadaver, and you have to identify that structure. Because our cadaver lends itself to clear dissections, he's always one of the bodies chosen to be tagged on the exams.

And Now, Back to Anatomy

Be honest - you miss posts about anatomy, don't you? Ok ok, relax, you don't have to twist my arm, you talked me into it. I'll write about anatomy again.

So we had a little break from dissecting recently, and we're just getting back into it. Anatomy is divided into four units. The first unit included the arms, legs, chest, and back. The second unit, which we just finished about a week ago, was the thoracic cavity - basically the heart, lungs, and ribs. Not surprisingly, it felt like a MUCH more manageable amount of information than the first unit. There was a also a lot less dissecting, because once you take the heart and lungs out, there's not much to do within the body itself. In comparison, during the first unit it felt like every day we were digging around for a new set of muscles.

Now we're in Unit III which is the abdomen. That includes all of the internal organs - the liver, pancreas, gall bladder, stomach, spleen, small intestine, colon, and about a bajillion and a half arteries, give or take a few. Coming up after December break is Unit IV, the head and neck, which we won't actually be dissecting ourselves, but instead looking at prosections, or pre-dissected structures. So, while it's incredibly hard to believe, we're almost done with dissecting already!

I thought I would introduce you to my cadaver first, and through the next couple posts I'll talk about some of my favorite things about dissecting and then some of the more uncomfortable parts - but I promise, nothing too gory! Before I start talking about all of this though, remember that the cadavers were real living people who made the most amazing donation to allow us to learn from them. When I'm tired and start to get lazy during dissections or want to rush through them (this happens during most dissections...), I try to remind myself that to not take full advantage and learn everything I can is selfish and disrespectful. So while sometimes you have to be able to step back from the cadaver as a person to be able to stomach what you're doing (for example, we cover his face with a towel as we dissect), you should constantly remember to treat the cadaver with as much respect as you would a living patient - minus the whole being-able-to-feel-pain thing.

A is for Anatomy. And for Awesome.

Anyone that has spoken to me in the last few weeks knows that we finally started anatomy here at NJMS. And by anatomy, I also mean histology, embryology, and cell biology because they're all part of one big class called ACE ("Is that stressful," you ask, "having so many different classes all rolled up into one?" noooo why would that be stressful? i'mnotstressedreallyi'mnotstressed - why would you ask that?! do i sound stressed?)

No but seriously, I love anatomy. I finally feel like a real med student. In fact, it is so exactly how I've always imagined it would be that I don't even feel like I'm a med student; I feel like I'm in a movie pretending to be a first year med student taking anatomy.

But, like all things in life (just call me Positive Polly), there is a downside. Jesus. H. Christ. It smells so bad (it = everything). Putting on my scrubs yesterday actually took two tries because the first time I attempted putting the shirt on I almost threw up and couldn't get it over my head. The second time I learned my lesson and held my breath until it was all the way on. What's funny is that in the anatomy lab itself, the smell of formaldehyde doesn't bother me. It's really just the scrubs and lab coats and the lockers we keep them all in. I'm not kidding, you would pass out if you tried locking yourself in one of our lockers - I don't know why you would ever do that though, so it's probably not something you should worry too much about.

One other teensy little downside is the insane amount of work we now have. Luckily, it is all SO INTERESTING. That is not sarcastic. I literally love everything we're learning. Even histology, and that's incredibly boring. I even enjoy having to stay up late to study sometimes. OK fine, that last part is obviously a lie - I still hate staying up late, even for anatomy.