carpals

yesterday the TAs did the next dissection for head and neck.
i did the anterior neck again. i like that dissection. amanda did the other side, and the others worked on the deep back muscles. we do the craniotomy during class so that the students can watch.


now that they've had their upper limb exam, i could cut the tendons of the wrist and reflect back the hand muscles and the forearm muscles. i actually ended up cutting away all of the forearm muscles, leaving the deepest, pronator quadratus, which is a squarish muscle at the wrist. it looks really neat. you can see the ulna and the radius, and the interossious membrane inbetween connecting the two. i cut most of the superficial hand muscles away, and cut the carpal tunnel ligament, so now you can see the metacarpals and 3 of the 8 carpal bones (trapizium, hamate, and pisiform). the remaining 5 are still encased in a really thick ligament that i haven't been able to cut through yet. i should have left the median nerve, which goes through the carpal tunnel, but i didn't think of it until just now. shoot.


i really like dissecting.