It is amazing how much we have accomplished in lab these past two days, but a little daunting to think of how much we need to know. All the muscles and tendons of the hand and forearm, as well as the nerves and arteries. I'm going to be putting lots of extra time outside of lab just so I can get everything straight.

We found another tumor on our cadaver today, this time it was in the medial side of his knee. We also dug around the muscles around the upper back/shoulder, and he has some serious and abnormal fascia development. The best way to describe it is to think of a spider spinning a really thick web connecting and holding all the muscles together. It makes me wonder if he was able to move his upper limbs at all, between the tumor under the scapula and the fascia binding all his muscles together.

Today was the first time it was a little weird dissecting, as I was working on the hand. The hand still looks very much like a hand, and the fact that we were taking the skin off (and having a hard time doing so) constantly reminded me that I was working on a real human. Most of the time you are so focused at finding structures and not cutting the wrong thing that the big picture of what you are working on doesn't even register. Even when I was dissecting the face, I wasn't weirded out at all although that is the most personal part of the body.