Dumpster Diving in Gross Anatomy

This has been a long week and it's almost over. My dad and Linda left Saturday when I was in anatomy lab. My mom and Josh left today when I was in anatomy lab. The good news is that I have tons of stuff and you can ask me anything about the thoracic limb!

Our first exam (gross anatomy) was today. For those of you who don’t know what gross anatomy is, well it’s gross because it stinks, and since we’re vet students and not med students, we each get a dead dog, hence the anatomy part. (That’s not really an accurate description, but will suffice in lay terms for now.)

Everyone else got a dog from the states, except our group. She was fresh, as of… what day are we in school? She started to rot last week so we put her (and this is the technical part) in a trash can out back in the sun FILLED with formalin (puppy pickler). Well, the lab tech forgot to take her out 4-12 hours later, so when I went to look for her, around noon on Sunday, in the heat, she was still in the vile dark brown vat ~40 hrs later. So, I managed to pull most of her out, put her on a gurney, wheel her inside, then realize that I was missing a leg… not good since that’s what we’ve committed to studying these first few weeks of school.

I go back outside. I stare into the brown liquid almost 4 feet deep. It does not look good. I chicken out and go get a boy to help; it’s just too gross. So this poor guy and I are fishing for this leg WITH a tree trimmer IN a dumpster full of pickling around back in the midday heat breathing the fumes. He finally gave up too, dove half way in, and after what felt like many seconds, retrieved my pickled leg. The good news is that my dog will last all semester now! I named her Onion because she smells so bad that she makes everyone’s eyes water, and, like an ogre, she has many layers (since we will be taking her apart piece by piece). I can’t even imagine how terrible med school would be. We were talking about how grateful we were that we got (naked) dogs and how awkward it would be to chop up (naked) people. Ewww.

So, my gross test in anatomy: I have committed to memory every region, bone, vein, artery, nerve, lymph node, muscle and it’s origin, insertion, function, and innervation. I’m pretty proud of myself since it was a lot of work. Out of 30 questions (38 if you count the 8 questions with a part B) I missed one part A, possibly one part B, and #30: the ungual process (google it). That’s a 92 by my calculations! I’ll find out tomorrow, but it sure feels nice to be so well prepared. Ross is definitely the right choice because these professors really go out of their way to help each individual student and the facilities are actually quite nice. Everyone has such a wonderfully positive attitude too (except my roommate); I just love it here (and it’s an island in freakin’ paradise)!

PS: New cars came from Japan today too! On this huge weird-lookin’ tanker boat thing that I’ve never seen the likes of before! I took a pict, so when I have time I’ll post it.

PPS: One of my friends in 6th semester has to spay a real dog next Friday, so Onion has graciously volunteered to get spayed one night this next week too!