Made the Same

As I stood there beside the cadaver with my eyes covered up with a pair of ugly plastic safety goggles that are clearly too big for my face and my mouth sealed shut afraid that human fat was going to magically find its way to the inside of my mouth, I realised that we are all made the same. The architecture of our human bodies is designed the same way. We all have the same muscles, the same bones, the same arteries, and the same veins. So why is it that we feel so different from one another? More importantly, why do we have to use those differences as an excuse to hate one another? It is these differences that divide our species and will undoubtedly contribute to our own demise.

When we were done dissecting the section we were assigned to on our cadaver we were allowed to view what everybody else was doing and how they were doing it. As I meticulously moved from one cadaver table to the next, there were about 8 or so dissecting tables in the room, I started to notice that a Sartorius on one cadaver looked very similar to a Sartorius on another. If the cadaver wasn’t fully exposed showing his or her genitalia, I probably wouldn’t have even been able to tell if the muscle came from a man or a woman. You see, even men and woman have at least ONE thing in common and contrary to popular belief, men are not from Mars and women are definitely not from Venus. Although, some women are seriously crazy, which lead me to believe otherwise.

After cutting through the skin with a number 10 blade and removing the yellow coloured fat that seemed to be growing back every time we get to a different layer carefully so that we don’t cut away any important veins, arteries, or ligaments, I finally got the sense of how privileged I am to be able to do this. Up until now, I didn’t think getting into medicine was that big of a deal – Well at least not as important as everybody else around me made it to be. They’re right you know. Not everybody gets to see a dead person on their own terms and definitely not everybody gets to dissect one to further their knowledge of the human body. This semester I’m finding that there’s lots to learn.  I still feel like I don’t know anything and from what I’ve heard I’ll still feel like that when I’m an intern.  Anatomy is definitely one of the cooler subjects I’m learning this semester.  Even though being a medical student can be quite challenging sometimes, at the end of the day, I’m just glad to be doing something I enjoy.