Another dissection.

Apparently, I'm an "expert" on dissecting the anterior neck? ha.

Last Friday, we had a dissection, and out of all 20 TAs, only Natalie and I showed up to do it. Which was fine.
We did a really good job, if I do say so myself. The back looked amazing and we found all of the neck structures and cleaned it up really well.

So then the sub- teacher on Thursday decides to flip the male cadaver onto his stomach and do a laminectomy. Um... okay. The spinal cord looks cool and all, but we did the ant. neck dissection on the male because he's the supine body for the semester... I guess Chris changed that.
Well, then we didn't have a supine body or a neck to see, so Dr. Bee this morning asked me to flip over the female cadaver and do that for her.
So the beautiful back muscles that we dissected out on Friday are now hidden because the female prone body is now supine.
I didn't complain. I got to dissect again, so fine.
Miguel said he would help me and I start right in, showing him where to cut and how far behind the ear to go. He'd never done this part of the body before. A few students start watching, which was weird because normally the TAs do the dissecting outside of the class period. I knew what I was doing, and what I was looking for because I had just done it a week ago, so I was moving pretty quickly. Kids were like "wow, you don't mess around!"
I found the common carotid a. and internal jugular v. and then CN X (vagus nerve) before Miguel was done with the sternoclidomastoid. He was having trouble finding the vessels and was afraid of cutting them so he had me do his side, too. he said, "andi, i need your expertise over here".
I showed students the submandibular gland as I cut it away, because we didn't need to keep it and they don't actually need to know about it. but i think it looks and feels cool, so i passed it around.
I cut down to the layrnx so they can see that. We ran out of blades though, and mine was so dull that it could be cleaned up a lot better, so hopefully we'll get new blades soon and i can do that next week.

Dr. Bee came over to see what I'd done and so did Dr. Forbes (who is the head of the bio department? i'm not really sure). she was pleased and dr forbes seemed impressed with my work.

i asked dr bee what she wanted to do about erector spinae and multifidus and splenius, etc. she said to try to get them out on the male body.
WHAT A MESS THAT WAS.
Chris destroyed so much muscle doing the laminectimy. splenius was shreaded, so was spinalis (which is understandable). but i couldn't even really get longissimus either. which is retarded. iliocostalis was okay, but that's all i could salvage.
So i reflected what was left of latissmus dorsi back and pulled the scapula more off to the side so that the students can see seratus anterior attaching at the medial border of the scapula, which looks cool.

so anyway.
last Friday's dissection was a waste of time (aside from the fact i had fun and learned more technique). but none of work is even being used and the students won't even be learning the back muscles on the bodies anymore because Chris went ahead and messed everything up.

but i really enjoyed myself today.
and it felt good to really know what i was doing and feel comfortable dissecting.
typically i'm unsure of myself and get scared. but not today.

i couldn't stop smiling afterwards.
nathan just laughed at me.