Dissection Day 3: Probably don't read this one.

Hi all,

1. Really, I'm fine. Just tired.

2. Formalin stench gets easier to deal with by the third day.

3. Ladies, you have fat investing your musculature. Gentlemen, that's why we're soft. Both of ya, get used to it.

4. It's nice to be done with superficial fascia. The layers really do have their own "vibrations" and emotional content. Yesterday, dissecting superficial fascia (or the adipose layer), the class was getting slow and grouchy. Today, as we got into muscle tissue, the energy was palpably higher in the room.

5. Real cadaver forms look nothing like the pictures in the books. Nothing is neatly differentiated. Skin, superficial fascia, and deep fascia are stuck together like the skin of an orange and the white stuff outside the slices. In fact, if you carefully pull the skin off an orange, you'll find fluff similar the that which binds the layers. My nephrologist friend says that in a live person, it's more slippery and less fluffy, but we agree that's likely a temperature and preservation artifact.

6. I know I said I wasn't going to blog, but hey. No one said it had to be coherent.

Goodnight, all.

--Melissa V.