Brains, Eyeballs & Mangled Faces: A Halloween-Themed Week in Med School

Those of you who read my previous post are privy to the fact that Tuesday's dissection was, well, epic. Human scalping (I actually forgot to mention this part), skull removal, brain adoration; essentially a day filled with revelry and stupefaction. After a day like that, the rest of the week must have been unbearably mundane, right? WRONG. Imagine my surprise when, upon arriving to lab on Thursday, I found myself in for yet another wonderful anatomical treat: the eye dissection.

Now, as many of you know, I absolutely LOVE the brain. Neuroscience was pretty much my passion during undergrad, and I continue to maintain an emphatic interest in the subject. However, I'd be outright lying if I said that the eye didn't have its own special place in my heart; if the brain is my high school sweetheart, the eye is my secret love affair. So although Thursday's dissection wasn't quite as thrilling (we don't have quite as much history together), it was still a remarkable experience. So here, back by popular demand, is another abridged* summary of lab-day events:

Step 1. Remove eyelids
Step 2. Deflate eyeball
Step 3. --
Step 4. Oh, yeah... It's probably going to squirt... Sorry about that.
Step 5. Remove Eyeball
Step 6. Check it out, man!

**Duh nuh nuh nuh! You've found a lens implant! These can be used to replace an old/faulty lens to correct for age-related vision loss. It has been added to your inventory.**

Step 7. Rejoice, marvel, revel, etc.

Awesome. End of story.

Story two: begin. We had the absolute COOLEST lecture on Friday. Throughout GIE, we will occasionally have guests give "Clinical Correlate" lectures, which are presentations that connect what we've been learning in anatomy to actual clinical medicine. This often includes surgeries/procedures that require the use of specific knowledge pertaining to the area we are studying at the time. Some past lectures have covered such topics as colorectal and urogenital surgeries, sports injury repairs, etc. Though these lectures have always been nice in that they provide a sense of context for the material, they haven't been particularly thrilling until now. But THIS week, oh man.

The lecturer this week, an absolutely hysterical, animated plastic surgeon, gave a halloween-themed presentation on facial reconstruction surgery. I have to say, the things these surgeons can do are absolutely unbelievable. He talked about reconstructing a patient's ear by tracing out a template and using cartilage from their ribs. He lectured on laparoscopic (minimally invasive surgery by camera) skull repairs. He described replacing a girl's scalp who had gotten her hair caught in farm machinery. He even told us about reconstructing AN ENTIRE FACE for a man who, in desperation, had shot himself with a shotgun. Un-be-lievable. And of course, along with the lecture, he provided us with ample, gruesome (perfectly appropriate for Halloween) pictures and videos of the procedures. What a perfect ending to a delightful week of fantastical anatomical exhibitions.



*NOTICE: Some artistic liberties have been taken. Events may have occurred slightly differently than portrayed.