Eyes on the prize (hahahaha)

We dissected our dog’s eyeball today. Last week we had cut away the skin, and the bones (the zygomatic), to isolate the extra-ocular muscles (7 separate muscles attach to the eyeball to allow completely movement) and the optic nerve (which is really cool – it’s enormous!) so it was pretty well dissected out and today we decided to really get in there. So we took the last scalpel blade and sliced away the cornea and a part of the sclera. It was somewhere between really gruesome and completely cool. There are real structures in there! I think I had always thought of the lens of the eye sort of as..umm..whatever is right under the cornea maybe? I had no idea, I guess, but it’s a hard little white ball fairly centrally located in the eyeball.

I know I’m a geek, but seriously, the body is just a spectacular thing. Anatomy and physiology are the most humbling subjects…I whine about having to go to class, make dinner, etc. But approximately 60 times every minute of every day, the cells in my heart are activated, they release a ton of calcium which alters the conformation of little proteins on the cardiac muscles so that they contract and then relax, sucking back up the calcium. My lungs inflate, deflate, exchange exactly the right amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide to keep me alive and well. My kidneys filter my blood, flawlessly determining exactly what minute components are bad for me or unnecessary and getting rid of them as necessary. The complexity of it all is of course mind-boggling, and perhaps I am more in awe of it coming from a computer science background. I used to think computers were complicated. Pfft. CHILD’S PLAY.

But the nice thing about computers is that if something breaks, there is a concrete reason. Perhaps it is compounded and perhaps you don’t KNOW the reason, but there is a reason. With advanced science and technology this is true of physical bodies almost all the time…but not entirely, I don’t think.

Today was our last anatomy lab, officially. And so our dog, who has served us all too well, is completely dissected. Her right arm was removed during dissection of thoracic limb muscles; her heart and lungs were removed during the upper GI and heart labs. Her entire intestinal tract has been lifted out of her abdomenal cavity, but not removed – I lost the fight as to whether we should cut out her jejunum and see just how long the small intestine really is. Her ovaries and kidneys were sliced in half and her…hmmmm…how to be delicate…ummm…”nether regions” were sliced open, belly button to vestibule.

I know, i know, and I’m sorry if this has been an overshare, but really? It wasn’t gross at all (except perhaps the eyeball and keeping in mind that her GI system was very clean). It was just really really cool, fascinating, educational, etc. I’m not sure yet how I feel about the euthanization of animals for educational purposes, and I truly think that the dog we dissected was a really fun, sweet dog when she was living and despite her antigen issues was most certainly deserving of a long, lazy life chasing bunnies in a field, but if she had to go, I’m glad that we got to benefit SO FREAKING MUCH from her.

So the prize referred to in my title – almost done with the first semester! Isn’t that crazy? Just the other day I was a lowly little first year who couldn’t read a radiograph and now I’m a…uh…hrm..first year and a HALF who might be able to decipher a radiograph if you told me what it was of, what species, what sex, and exactly, precisely, what I was looking for. Well, whatever. It’s progress.