There's a first time for everything

As a new medical student, there are a lot of firsts. First day in medical school. First test. First patient. First nervous breakdown...well hopefully I can avoid some of the firsts that other med students may experience.

Today was an exciting first. The first day with a cadaver. While some may find that scary or disturbing or maybe both, I was looking forward to today and even though our goals in lab today were fairly simply it was a special day nonetheless.

Today we investigated the upper chest of our cadaver to look at the pectoralis major and minor as well as some of the innervation and vessel supply. It's a fancy way of saying that we peeled our person so we could look at the chest muscles. Weird...but cool. I'm thankful that so many people are willing to let us explore like this so that when it comes to working with living patients we know where the inside parts are from experience and not just drawings. No book or poster could ever match the benefits gained from human dissection.

I'm sure there will be many more firsts along the way, but this one will be hard to beat as far as true educational impact goes. Until then it's a matter of staying afloat amidst the flood of information in between exciting firsts like today.