Laminectomy.

Today was the first dissection, and all things considered, it went well. I admit I was extremely nervous this morning when I walked into lab, but for all the nightmares I've had over the years regarding cadaver dissection, it was really much less daunting than I thought it was going to be. The smell wasn't even that bad, but perhaps that's because I worked often with phenol and formaldehyde in undergrad and have gotten used to them.

So, what was it like? Strange, but not entirely unfamiliar. Even though scalpels are much sharper than kitchen knives, once the skin was retracted, our cadaver resembled nothing more than a large piece of meat. It may be discourteous to compare a human body to something one would find in a butcher shop, but the unpleasant truth is that anatomically speaking, we are nothing more than sentient pieces of flesh, and we resemble our bovine and porcine foodstuffs more closely than we'd like to think.

It took about an hour to figure out the best way to slice through the layers of muscle on the back, and then another 45 minutes cleaning away the area around the spine. We then used a bone saw the cut through the laminae and removed the spinous processes (the sticking-out parts you can feel when you touch your spine). This exposed the dura mater (literally "hard mother," the outermost protective layer of the spinal cord). We were very surprised when, upon opening the dura mater and expecting to find the spinal cord, there was nothing inside. This is not to say that our cadaver didn't have a spinal cord at one point - mostly likely it disintegrated during the embalming process. It was a bit disappointing, however, since the entire procedure took well over two hours and in the end we couldn't identify the spinal structures we were looking for. I imagine we will have to get one of the other lab groups to show us their cadaver and point out the relevant structures.

I wish I had more time to ruminate on the experience, but it was truly rather anticlimactic. Moreover, I have at least three lectures to learn tonight, as well as prepare for tomorrow's dissection, so further reflection will have to wait for another time. The anxiety which has settled in my mind since starting med school is certainly something I will have to address at some point, but for now all I will say is that in two days I have accumulated more knowledge than in a year of college, and yet the fear of failing the first block of exams rests heavily in my thoughts at all hours of the day and night.