Dissection #1

(photo borrowed from kickassetout, note that this is not Uni. dissection room. no cred taken)

I went to the anatomy building a good half an hour before the dissection course started in order to get a locker and perhaps get a good slot at the table.
When I entered the entrance was filled by my colleague, every one of us ready to carve in on the specimens.
Dr. Snajdr gathered the group and tried to get the attention of the buzzing crowd of students, which he managed to do rather quickly considering all the excitement.
A short introduction followed with information about the different cutting techniques, important areas to be vary not to destroy, common rules and so on. It was nice to see all of my colleagues in lab coats, looking all proper and professional.

I was expecting our class to have two full specimens and some free limbs but unfortunately, by unknown reason, we only got one full scale body. We divided into two groups with 13 people in each group and started to continued carving of the fat tissue from our specimen (the second year demonstrators had already started to dissect during our introduction in order to save us time).

We got to dissect on our own under supervision of our teacher assistant Kristyna and the first hour simply flew by. A few minutes later I moved from dissecting the dorsal side to clean up the posterior aspect of the left arm and finally engaged the fascias of the muscles and some yet unidentified nerves and veins. I isolated the nerves and vessels and found out it was the ulnar nerve.
By now my scalpel was blunt but I din't change it due to the fact that time soon was over any way.

Even with 6-8 sharp scalpels working on one specimen from all sides and angles there were no cutting incidents - only a close one.
 The grease from the subcutaneous layer covers pretty much everything including your gloves and tools. I slipped many times, luckily only with the forceps, but the demonstrator to my left was not far away to cut my cheek up.
She was making a cut from underneath, with the sharp edge of the scalpel pointing in my direction, while I was sitting down on a chair concentrating on my own cutting with my face just next to the tissue. I guess she tried to get through a rather dense structure and in my periphery I suddenly saw her either slip, or actually get through the tissue, plunging out with the overpowered motion towards my face. Luckily my reflexes projected my head back and sideways and the blade never reached me. I don't know how close it actually was but I can guarantee you that it felt pretty close.

I didn't learn a lot today but more importantly I got to see how the tissue behaves when cut and now I know what to study during the weekend.
Kristyna even set up a test on Monday, which I in fact really like since it motivates me to study even more.

It's going to be a long week with a lot of studying but the reward is pretty neat; a lot of knowledge, fun and in the end hopefully a credit...