Adventures in the Dissection Lab with Little Blackie

We've been dissecting a cat in the anatomy class I'm taking this term. We are only doing the muscles, not the nerves or viscera or any of that messy stuff. The cats came skinned, except for the paws and head, so even that messy part was already taken care of.

Out of the 8 cats that the class is using, 6 are black. Even so, I named mine Little Blackie.

My partner and I were both really tentative at the beginning, getting frustrated from the very start because we were tearing some of the muscles in our clumsy attempts to clean off the fat and the webbed connective tissue that covers muscles. We had no idea what we were looking at, what we were supposed to see, and what we were supposed to do about it. We were flailing. But nobody else in class was whining so we wondered if we were just idiots. It went along this way for two lab sessions.

Okay, it was time to get on top of this dog's breakfast of a cat dissection.

The instructor hasn't been particularly proactive. But she did alert the class to a couple of websites with some great photos. I made a Powerpoint deck from one site that had very clear photos with labeled muscles (there are more than 50 muscles that we need to learn about). I then spent most of the snowed-in weekend researching and putting together a rather vast spreadsheet listing the name of each muscle, its origin and insertion, its action, and some notes about how it looks in the photos and in our own cat. Once I put it all together, I sent it to my lab partner (and to the instructor because I believe in sharing; it wasn't original research by any means, just reorganizing info that is already in numerous places, and I thought she might be able to use it in the future. Personally I thought she should have already made something like this, but I certainly learned a hell of a lot by doing the work myself).

During class on Monday, my partner and I took those photos and we made our cat look as much like them as we could. We ripped through that cat like nobody's business. I don't think we lifted our heads once in the two hours of lab. Combined with some extra time I had already put in the week before, Little Blackie was finally looking properly dissected.

I spent two more hours with our cat on Tuesday night checking and double checking all of the info in my spreadsheet. Does this muscle really have a ventral insertion? Does it originate on cervical vertebrae or on the lambdoidal ridge (the ridge at the back of your skull)? Does it abduct or adduct the bone it is attached to? Did we dissect it properly on at least one spot on the cat? My partner showed up as I was heading out and she spent several more hours with Little Blackie.

Today in lab we had our first cat dissection quiz. The instructor had small bits of styrofoam, each with 10 numbered pins stuck in it. She was going to give a list of muscles and, working with our partner (bonus!), all we had to do was stick a pin in the correct muscle! My partner and I looked at each other and grinned. We had exposed and identified 47 out of the 50 muscles on our list, had quizzed each other extensively already, including on muscles that weren't going to be on the quiz, and even knew origin/insertion/action. And this quiz was simply to stick a damned pin in a muscle?

Then the instructor said, "...and you'll do this on someone else's cat!"

That put a bit of a spin on things.

We glanced at the two partners across the bench from us. They seemed to have made the most early progress on their cat and without even discussing it, my partner and I almost jumped across the table to their cat. We had about 60 seconds to orient ourselves on this new cat.

We proceeded to nail that quiz. We didn't hesitate for even a second for 9 out of the 10 muscles--the only brief point of discussion was how to insert the pins so they would stay in place since we were turning the cat over and around. But remembering which extensor is which on the forelimb did require us to recite our little mnemonic formulas; funnily, both of us had independently developed a counting formula to remember this (I love it when I can work with some just as anal as I am). We quickly reached agreement on the the extensor we wanted, pushed in the pin, double checked all of them again, then sat back and waited.

Well, we were the only team out of 7 in the class that got all 10 muscles right on the first pass. We high-fived each other, discreetly.

The team that got Little Blackie was grumbling about our cat but it was clear they didn't know the difference between an extensor and a flexor, much less which extensor was which. Not our fault, nor that of Little Blackie, whose lower forelimb musculature is exemplary.

We have to do another dissection of a yet-to-be-determined animal, and I suggested that my lab partner and I remain partners and do it together. We seem to be working well together. I hope she takes me up on it. I'm a competitive sort (hey, if it's true, might as well own it), and with her as a dissection and research partner, I can expect continued success--and a good grade in the class.

With the prospect of vet school ahead, I'm sure this is not the last dissection that I'll be doing, but it has certainly been a challenge, and in the end even a bit fun.

On a final note, I won't put any photos of Little Blackie here. We were encouraged, somewhat unnecessarily, to be respectful of our cats. My partner and I even wrap him in paper towels before slipping him back in the plastic storage bag to keep his various bits from tearing or getting wound around other bits. We always slip him gently in head first, and lift him out instead of dumping him in the tray. I don't know if he was loved in life but there's no doubt that we are treating him as kindly as we can now.

Intertubes Wildlife

There is some really crazy stuff out there on the intertubes. To wit.

Through the Looking Glass

It is definitely strange here. And I mean strange beyond the usual thrashing around associated with moving to a new place.

Anytime you move to a new place you have to learn your new phone number and new address. That's not a big problem for most of us. But I've also got a new mail box and combination, office phone, loaner cell phone (more on this in the Strange section below), badge number...I have to be ready to whip out any and all of these numbers for just about any transaction.

The compound is tightly clustered in some places, sprawled out in others. I'm learning to navigate unfamiliar streets with unfamiliar names either on foot, in a taxi, in a bus, or in a friend's car. That's a tough transition for a North American used to learning a new place by car!

have gotten a bunch of administrative and personal settling-in tasks done in just these four short days. The weekend is coming up (Thursday and Friday are the weekend in KSA) and a new friend and I (a geologist I met in orientation) are planning to make a grand shopping expedition into Al Khobar tomorrow.

Besides this geologist friend, I see other people from my orientation here and there in camp. Plus I keep getting introduced to new people who, when they see me around, introduce me to whomever they might be with at the time. And everyone is unrelentingly friendly and helpful.

This leads me to tell you about the two most important things I'm learning that are key to making this work: ask questions of everyone you meet (where to buy a TV, a couch, a mixing bowl, how to get cash, where to catch the bus, on and on)--and I do mean everyone because it is amazing how much some of these folks know--and remain patient.

The whole concept of inshallah (god willing) makes me twitchy because I am by no means a believer in the predetermination of the outcome of things such as the date and time my Ebox might be delivered. But the Saudis are in large part quite fatalistic about everything large and small. Pitching a hissy fit won't get you very far in KSA.

So now to the strange bits.

Quite a few Saudi men wear thobes to work--along with dress socks and shoes (that alone is pretty comical). If a man wears a thobe, he is often wearing a red and white checked scarf. There is apparently something like gang symbolism in the way a man folds the kaffiyeh. Some of them are elaborately twisted and folded and tossed over the shoulder--attention to detail that is strangely feminine. An equally large number of Saudi women veil from top of head to toe with only their eyes visible. So you see these flapping white and black human-sized sails everywhere. I even see women in abbayahs and head scarves on the running track around the golf course--running. In their abbayah. In 85degree temps. This wiki article has some good photos.

I take the dogs out in the morning and evening for long walks around that same golf course. By a fluke, I am nearly always out there when the calls to prayer start (around 4:30am and 7pm or so). Most mosques just play prerecorded tapes over loudspeakers. Very loud speakers. There are at least half a dozen mosques within hearing distance and the calls weave into this weird, echoing, dissonant chant. Since I am out before sunrise and after sunset, it is kind of eerie.

I can't buy a scooter or car or mobile phone until I get my iqama or work permit. Well, that's not quite true. I can buy a cell phone but I can't buy the SIM card that makes it work!

Stores are usually closed from 11am to 2 or 3 in the afternoon for noon prayers, a long lunch, and presumably a nap. You have to schedule your shopping excursions around prayers because shops close and kick your infidel butt out onto the street. Most prayer times last about 25 minutes but that could be quite an inconvenience during, say, August. During orientation, I was thoughtfully given a daily prayer schedule for 2009 in the form a little foldout wallet card. But that sort of information is available online too.

Life in the compound is a series of rules and silly administrative hoops. To get home internet, I had to get my Aramco login, go to a special site and set up a home internet password that was different from my Aramco password, then go to another site and request a second phone line. That will be installed Saturday (first day of the workweek). After that is done, I can go to yet another site and request DSL service. Then I wait. Inshallah, I'll get home internet sometime in 2009.

I'm sure I'll return to the Strange theme in future posts but I'll close this one with screen shots of my Outlook calendar showing both regular and hijrah dates (in which it is the year 1430) and my blogspot login screen.