Microdissection
Last Friday, I killed ("sac'd") and systematically pulled apart six mice. For practice. I was looking for their lymph nodes, which I will eventually be expected to harvest from experimental mice. Yesterday I dissected two more mice for practice.
Turns out, lymph nodes are pretty small; and mice are tiny (the entire torso section of a mouse is only a very little bit larger than my thumb), which means that their lymph nodes are positively microscopic. In fact, when Masie was teaching me, she was using a microscope to better locate them. I can (and do) find them without a microscope because I hate microscopes, but it's a bit harder. But! I can find some of the lymph nodes quite consistently, and have had about 60% success locating the others. So hopefully I'll soon reach a point where I can reliably find all of them all the time, and it will help that the experimental mice will have swollen lymph nodes (because they will be, you know, sick).
I enjoyed dissections in high school (a fetal pig in freshman biology, and a cat in advanced biology), and learned heaps from doing them, and I'm learning a lot now, too. I can't help it if I'm a bloodthirsty barbarian, but at least I'm channeling this unfortunate trait in constructive ways, like medicine.
And one of these days, I'll believe myself. In the meantime, though, I will continue to vacillate between fascination with dissections and surgeries, and disgust at my own fascination with blood and gore.
Turns out, lymph nodes are pretty small; and mice are tiny (the entire torso section of a mouse is only a very little bit larger than my thumb), which means that their lymph nodes are positively microscopic. In fact, when Masie was teaching me, she was using a microscope to better locate them. I can (and do) find them without a microscope because I hate microscopes, but it's a bit harder. But! I can find some of the lymph nodes quite consistently, and have had about 60% success locating the others. So hopefully I'll soon reach a point where I can reliably find all of them all the time, and it will help that the experimental mice will have swollen lymph nodes (because they will be, you know, sick).
I enjoyed dissections in high school (a fetal pig in freshman biology, and a cat in advanced biology), and learned heaps from doing them, and I'm learning a lot now, too. I can't help it if I'm a bloodthirsty barbarian, but at least I'm channeling this unfortunate trait in constructive ways, like medicine.
And one of these days, I'll believe myself. In the meantime, though, I will continue to vacillate between fascination with dissections and surgeries, and disgust at my own fascination with blood and gore.