Vultures

Trust me. There's a reason why they put the word gross in gross anatomy.

We started lab this week.

I know it's a rite of passage. Every med student goes through it. And dissecting a cadaver? Means you get to be part of that cool club with the cool handshake with the other cool people whom you can talk to about all that cool anatomy stuff.

And I was excited. Excited to see everything I've been learning from books and lectures. Excited to be part of this "med school experience." Excited to learn from doing. But I was also so apprehensive. Seriously. Cutting someone open? Especially someone who's dead? It's not natural. And it's not like chopping up chicken for stew. This is a person! Someone just like you and me. I couldn't wrap my mind around the fact that I would be cutting through someone. Cutting through skin. Fat. Muscle. Bone. I couldn't get over the fact that it felt like a total invasion of personal space. Personal privacy. Yes, I know that they donated their body to science. But when they made that decision, did they realize that first year students would be doing the dissecting? In other words, complete idiots to the whole dissection process. Cause honestly? Most of us know nothing about dissecting a cadaver. We don't know how thick the skin is. We barely know where and what muscles should be where and what. When we're dissecting, our hands are everywhere - prying, pulling, pushing.

Now mind you, I'm completely grateful to these people. This is an experience that no one outside of the medical field has ever had. Will ever have. And oh man, learning by doing makes so much more sense than reading pages and pages of anatomy books and then trying to correlate that to illustrated drawings.

But the first day, I was scared. When I walked into lab on Monday, all decked out in my anatomy gown and purple gloves, I was shaking. Not visibly. Heck, no. I have far too much pride to let my classmates know how freaked out I was. And that false swagger got me through a lot. It got me through the smell which hits you the moment you walk into lab. And, to be perfectly honest, I don't think I'll ever get used to it. The smell follows me around. No matter how much I wash my hand, I swear I can still smell it on my fingers. It's on my salt and vinegar chips. It's on my clothes. It's in my books. I can't escape it.

Yet somehow, I managed to get to my group without hurling up the breakfast I had forced myself to eat that morning. And bright, fake smile in place, I met "George." Luckily, the anatomy staff had placed big black trash bags over his arms, his legs, his face. Also, he's a pretty big guy which kind of distorts the body. All of which made it much easier to pretend that there wasn't a person lying in front of us. That it was just another science experiment to get through.

Two of my group members made the first cut.

I couldn't do it. And I don't really know quite what I was expecting. Stuff to ooze out, I guess. He didn't "wake up" on the table when we made that first cut, like he did in my nightmares. Nothing happened actually. We folded back the skin, and proceeded to start taking the fat off so that we could see the muscles underneath better.

Now, because George is a big guy, we all had to help out. And pretty soon, I was de-fatting like nobody's business. I was so concentrated on my little section, that I completely forgot exactly what I was doing. Focused on the details, I could forget all about the big picture, which I was more than happy to do. We were at it for a good two hours. And then, finally, we started to see the muscles. The pectoralis major. The pectoralis minor. The deltoid. Every now and then someone would find something huge. A nerve we were supposed to locate. The vein without an artery. Each time we would get very excited. "Look what I found!" "Whoaaaaaaa..." "SO cool!" We were like little kids. "Look here!! Look here!!!"

And then, all of a sudden, I started to feel very weak. Maybe it was from standing for the past two hours, but I felt my knees starting to buckle. So I grabbed the lab stool and tried to keep going. But then my head started spinning, and I noticed I was breaking out in a cold sweat. I tried to reason with myself in my head. Michelle. Don't freak out. You're doing great. Look at how much you've done already! Heck, you found the cephalic vein! There was no use. I couldn't get the room to stop spinning. I was starting to black out.

Muttering an excuse to my group, I rushed out of lab. But I could barely see where I was going. I was just fumbling to get through any door. I ended up in the supplies room. I didn't care how we were told not to touch anything in the anatomy lab. I plopped down on the floor and put my head in between my knees. After ten minutes, I tried to get back up, but the moment I stood up, the dizziness started all over again.

I couldn't finish anatomy lab that day. And after freaking out for twenty or so minutes that I wouldn't be able to get through med school, I went home and ate some chocolate. Talk about a cure-all.

I got through anatomy lab just fine on Wednesday. True, I'm still prying and pulling and pushing and I still have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, but I guess that's what the actual rite of passage is. Figuring it out. Working it out.