Personal Narrative: Something I Never Expect To See In College

Something I never expected to see in college was a dead body. At first, she was face down in a blue body bag, surrounded by preserving fluids that made some people nauseated. Her head was shaved and the first incisions were made on her legs, arms, back, and butt. Muscles were starting to be isolated and pulled away from the body that housed them. The shock of seeing a person, someone who was alive less than a year ago, be disassembled in front of your eyes takes a strong stomach. Some of my classmates couldn’t look at her at all, others would look, but couldn’t touch, and then there was me and a few others could look and touch and cut into this thing that we never felt was human. My anatomy lab was Wednesday nights from five to seven forty-five on the top floor of Weyandt, the natural science building. As soon as you walked in the door you could smell her body. It wasn’t formaldehyde, which would have been much worse, but the scent wasn’t pleasant. Every time we were in the cadaver room, Dr. Schellinger would ask us if we could taste what we were smelling. She could always taste it, and I’m glad I never got to experience that. The first part …show more content…
Her abdominal cavity was cut open, rib cage broken and splayed out so you could see the whole cavity. Her legs and arms were cut again to expose superficial veins, deep veins, arteries, and nerves. The organs were isolated and detached from her body. The heart was enlarged. A normal heart is about the size of a fist and this heart barely fit in two hands. Her lungs were beautiful for the eighty-year-old woman she was. They were still a bright pink with only a few black spots on them from pollution. Her kidneys told a different story. One had a large groove in it that wasn’t supposed to be there and had a black tumor the size of a gobstopper. Her face was always covered with a paper towel. It was hard to see her eyes even when the towel was off. They looked like two black