Blood and Guts

WARNING: The post is graphic.

It's amazing the things that one can get used to.

In my career as a veterinary student, I've dealt with some pretty nasty things. From explosive, hemorrhagic parvo diarrhea to a one eyed, three legged fetal monster, I've become witness to a number of grotesque scenes. But nothing beats volunteering at the necropsy lab.

Necropsy is the animal equivalent of autopsy. Owners submit their animals for dissection for a number of reasons...curiosity, diagnosis/prevention of a bigger, herd level problem, or as a way to definitively point the finger at whoever may have killed their pet either purposely or inadvertently. Just like with human records, everything is confidential, well-documented and done in a respectful manner. There are tox screens, bacterial cultures and virology panels. Everyone wears the proper protection and undergoes training before wielding any sharp object. But still, there's nothing simple or pretty about cutting up and inspecting the organs of a 2,000lb horse.

A person's first experience "on the floor" of the necropsy lab can be a bit of a shock. Everything is washable, including the keyboards of the computers. There are big, stainless steel tables and tall, tall ceilings which transition into windows that let in a lot of natural light. The floors are slanted downward and lead to grates in the floor which collect all manner of bodily fluids. The ventilation has to be good, or people would probably need to excuse themselves every few minutes due to the condition of some of the bodies. A big table with an assortment of knives and wire cutters line one wall and a band saw is sectioned off behind plastic shower curtains on the other side. Sound gets lost on the floor as the ventilation is always running, so music blares loudly from a big stereo in the corner.

It's actually a bit homey and calming, if you can get over the knives. Everything is very spread out and spacious, and the gear that you wear on the BSL-2 (biosafety level 2) floor is usually loose fitting and cottony. The music makes everything feel very normal, until a giant, dead Holstein cow is slowly brought in through massive steel doors from the holding area. She's hanging from one leg by a chain attached to a moving crane/scale and laid gently across one of the stainless steel tables.

The process of taking apart an animal is very orderly and precise. The front limb is cut and reflected backwards until the shoulder comes free of the body and the leg is bent straight up. In a strange way, the animal looks as if its giving an overextended high five. Then the back leg is reflected in the same way by dislocating the head of the femur. The bone is extremely smooth and glistening white. The thorax and abdomen are both opened next, and oftentimes giant bolt/wire cutters have to be used to open the ribs. It's a sound you won't soon forget.

Then each organ is inspected individually, and the "pluck" is removed. This involves cutting the tongue free of its mouthly attachments and then dissecting the esophagus and trachea out of the neck until you enter the thoracic cavity and come to the lungs and heart. The entire bit- tongue, esophagus and trachea, lungs and heart, all connected- are "plucked" from the animal and laid out. Sound gross? Try opening the entire intestinal tract. I always try to make sure that I'm far away from the table when that has to be done, trying to look busy by scrubbing a knife or picking up a stray bit of adipose tissue from the floor.

Certain organs are "breadloafed," or cut in strips to look throughout the inside for nodules, masses, parasites or any assortment of oddities. The head is removed, cut in half longitudinally by the band saw and the brain extracted. The size of an animal's brain is highly variable, but it can be quite shocking to see just how small Fido's grey matter is.

Lastly, samples are taken from different places and cultures obtained. Everything that could help diagnose the animal's condition is removed, and lesions are described. With bloodied gloves, the pathologists scribble their findings across white lined paper which will later be faxed and transcribed into an online database.

If this all sounds like an episode of Dexter, you're absolutely dead on. Even the knives used by this particular lab are from a knife company called Dexter. Everyone wears coveralls or scrubs and aprons, plastic sleeves, gloves, hair caps and glasses to prevent any splatter from getting in eyes or hair.

You might be thinking, who would ever want to work in such an environment?

Anatomic pathologists are a unique breed of people. They'll discuss their dinner plans while examining the valves of a sectioned heart, comment on the "beauty" of a classic pattern of bronchopneumonia or set things aside "for their collections." Everyone seems to have a favorite organ system. Some people are the "repro" guys, comparing the penises and uterii of lemurs and elephants. Some really like chickens, and will walk around with a leg and show you how pulling the tendon can make the talons open and close. You'll never meet a more interesting or warped group, who are really quite sweet, intelligent and down to earth. They all seem to love to learn and are happy to show you how to remove the capsule from a kidney or the proper way to decapitate a horse.

Sometimes when I'm in the lab, I'll turn around and look back at the clotted mess on the table, the assortment of instruments scattered about and the bits of organs and think, "what the hell am I doing?" Anyone walking in off the street who witnessed such carnage would surely faint. How is it possible that a human can get so used to blood and guts that it barely phases them and seems almost normal? Some pathologists may even touch specimens without gloves. After a while, nothing is gross, nothing is weird, and seeing eyeballs sitting atop stomachs in a pile waiting for disposal would never invoke a gag reflex. If anything, a pathologist would be teased for getting grossed out.

I suppose its the same as men and women who go off to war and barely flinch when bombs and gun shots are heard off in the distance. The brain can adapt to almost anything, just as your nose adapts to a constant assault by becoming slowly desensitized. If my stint at the necropsy lab has taught me anything, its just how amazing and complex the brain and body are. I certainly understand my own anatomy better, and can now almost picture the insides of an animal churning away when I'm looking at it, as if it were made out of glass.

I've even had the experience of biking by roadkill while on my way home and identifying certain crushed bones. No, I don't touch them, but yes, I realize I'm a bit creepy.

But honestly, I do believe that many people have become far too removed from their own anatomy and the inner workings of living beings. The amount that many humans don't know about their own bodies and the food that they eat amazes me. I know I've ranted about this before, but it just boggles my mind. The one thing in your life that you have nearly complete control over is your very own body. And yet, people stuff themselves full of McDonald's and grease and saturate their lungs with smoke and their livers with alcohol (me included) and have no idea how the body responds to injury or maybe even where their liver is. Wouldn't you want to know everything there was to know about your body? How to prevent certain injuries? After all, you live in your bodies for (usually) about 70-80 years. Time for a tune up?

Seeing those animals opened up makes me wonder what my heart looks like, if my lungs are pristine and pink, if my liver has rounded or jagged edges. It makes me want to take better care of my body so that if someone ever opened me up on an autopsy table, they'd say, "Wow, look at that coronary groove! No atherosclerosis to speak of." Once again, I realize I'm creepy, and morbid. But these are own bodies we're talking about here. It's perfectly natural.

Screaming Infants in Denny's

There are too many screaming infants in Denny's. It is 9:11 pm, and there are at least 2 or 3 screaming infants. Shouldn't they be asleep? Shouldn't they be anywhere but here? My non-patience for children grows...

Did you know that according to insurance companies and other institutions, pregnancy is a mild systemic disease?

Time has been going by really fast today. Sometimes I can't believe that I'm 23. Certain days, I get extremely nostalgic and all of these memories of the "old days" come flooding back and I feel like I should have a rocking chair and a pair of knitting needles. I remember back to 16, when I first drank, and my friend ate lots of blue and vanilla cake and then proceeded to vomit blue vomitus into the sink. They had to use a cup to scoop it out since it wasn't draining. I remember my first kiss and my first day of college in the dorms and my last day of college in the stadium sweating and waiting for my diploma. A lot of these memories are tagged on facebook now...I just really hope the server never crashes because it seems like no one prints out real photos anymore (unless its for wall collages). I have books and books of photo albums from my grandparents and parents but I'll have nothing to contribute to my future doggies and kitties except a facebook link. If I had to pick one thing that has revolutionized my generation, it would have to be facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has changed everything. I consider it a mark of pride that Zuckerberg is from Harvard, so close to my home. Like I birthed him or something. "Mark Zuckerberg came from Massachusetts." Helll yeah.

Anyway, nostalgia. Maybe I'll go to Cracker Barrel one of these days and pirate a rocking chair. I wish I could just dig my heels in and slow it all down. When I turn 25, I'm bound to have a quarter life crisis. It's just going to happen. And 30...let's not even go there. Did you know Rihanna just turned 23? That's how old I am, and she's a millionaire...

The worst part about it all, is that older people just LOVE to tell you how terrible it is to age. "My joints always hurt now." "Myyy psoriasssisss." "I can't sleep." "Just you wait til your metabolism slows down. You won't be able to eat anything." Or today, in surgery lab..."to keep the leg in the normal flexed position, put their foot against your belly while you bandange. That part gets easier and easier as you get older, har har har." Great. Thanks for the reminder that sooner or later I'm going to become flabby, slow and sad. Misery loves company.

I apologize, this post is pretty much a hodge podge of babble.

Last realization for the night...

They say that as medical and veterinary students go through schooling, they experience a "compassion drain." They slowly go from caring to not caring over the 4 years that they spend in school. The theory is that its hard to care for other creatures when you're struggling to make it through. You subconsciously blame your patients, the focus of your work, for your current lack-o-life. For a while, I felt like I was experiencing this, and it may partly be to blame for my blooming interest in pathology (the study of disease, and dead things). It doesn't seem so bad to never deal with live animals anymore. But then today, in surgery lab, they brought in live dogs that had just been spayed for us to practice bandaging on. The dog was lying there, doped out of its mind while the tech restrained it and the instructor demonstrated the technique. I felt an overwhelming urge to touch and pet it. It's like when you walk through the mall and see clothing that you want to try on and you just can't LOOK at it. You have to feel it before you decide whether or not you want to buy it. It was just a magnetic draw. I really really really wanted to pat the dog. It was so reassuring. For a moment I remembered exactly what I was there for and the whole future came shooting into view. I am going to be a vet.

I can't wait.

Even if time is going fast and I want to dig my heels in, at least I know where its leading. Thank goodness for animals.

Back in the saddle again

Alright. I've got my Pandora on and a comfy sweatshirt and an iced coffee. It's time to start blogging again and reawaken the right side of my brain which has been put on the back burner for a looooong while now.

I'm going to bar trivia tonight, which is always a very interesting experience for me. The shear amount of information I have NO CLUE about is pretty depressing. Don't even get me started on history and sports. I had to confirm the picture identity of Kennedy the other day with a classmate...apparently he had Addison's disease (hypoadrenocorticism) and I just wasn't positive if it was him or not. Doesn't matter that he may have one of the most recognizable faces in American history. I'm clueless when it comes to that kind of stuff. Truth is, vet school has turned me into a big science nerd that has lost a lot of the well-roundedness that I used to possess. I really really like science and medicine, don't get me wrong. But I've been progressively feeling a bigger and bigger disconnect with the non-science public. It's strange to have to try and think of a way to put something so that everyone will understand what you're talking about. For instance...when I'm talking about the orientation of things, in my head it always comes out in medspeak. That guy's tattoo is lateral to his sternum. It's no longer "to the right." The plantar side of my foot really hurts. It's not the bottom. It's like speaking a foreign language that isn't romantic or easy on the ears, and makes you sound pretentious. When I came back from summer break and saw my vetfriends again, it was definitely a relief to unfasten the belt that held in all my geeky knowledge and let it all nerd out.

On the flipside, I've recently made some new friends that aren't related to vet med at all, and it is quite refreshing to hear people talk about things that don't have to do with the prison that is G-150 (our giant classroom). For a while, I can almost forget that vet med is all I breath and drink, besides my running obsession.

Anyway...

The good thing about bar trivia is the people watching. People get so ridiculously competitive at bar trivia that its almost comical. They glance around with narrowed eyes looking for cellphones and any kind of sneaky cheating. They contest answers. And you can always tell the seriousness of the teams by their names. People who rarely ever do bar trivia have names like "Winning Like Charlie Sheen" or "I Wish This Mic Was a Dick" etc. People who always do bar trivia (and usually come in the top 3) have much less profane and way more "cool" names. There's undoubtedly gonna be some guy with glasses who looks like your typical hipster and some girl who is kind of loud and has an annoying laugh. I almost always wish I could be on their team, and I'm always a little bit jealous. Way too competitive for my own good.

Do you ever look around Facebook or social networking sites and just see people you wish you could walk up to and say, "lets be friends?" It's happening more and more lately. I just want to meet more like minded, interesting people who really love to talk. Silence is golden, sometimes. But usually it's boring.

That's all I can think of for now. Probably gonna go switch out my laundry. Just an FYI, if you ever stick a Canadian quarter into a laundry machine coin loader thing, even if you have all regular quarters next to it, the thing won't close. It somehow knows that you're trying to trick it with a non-American quarter.