Wednesday, October 21, 2009

The spinal cord is the size of my pinky...

The dissection of our cadaver is coming along quite nicely. I know I say this a lot but WOW. The body is just amazing.

We dissected the spinal cord a few weeks ago. I'm still speechless over that. We took one of those hand-held saw's like you see on TV (the most recent episode of HOUSE used one...if you need a picture reference) in the autopsy room. We literally cut through the spine of both our cadavers! The smell was atrocious but the sight of it was incredible.

We performed a laminectomy on both cadavers. We cut a rectangular box from the spine and pulled it out! No joke! Then we examined the spinal cord and cut it out a piece of it for further review.

It's much smaller than I expected. But after collaboration with my classmates I realized it's just the right size. The vertebrae we view in class always have small holes so the spinal cord can't be THAT large.

It's about the size of a large pinky finger, maybe that of a woman with large hands, like myself. It's the consistency of squid or octopus, very spongy-like. When you pick it up and see how small and fragile it is you can't help but think, "Wow, electrical and chemical impulses travel from my brain to this small thing???" This super small thing is so important.

Everyday I'm amazed at the complexity and organization of it all. The body is so wonderful that man has not yet figured out how to replicate it. Isn't that amazing?

How did God create such an incredible machine?

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