(no subject)
I have pathology labs this rotation and we do a bunch of necropsies (animal autopsies).
I had done a few cats and some wild birds in previous years, but this was my first experience with cows. Wow, there are horrors in the path lab that defy description @___@. Necropsies at the vet college are very thorough and not at all cosmetic (since the bodies get incinerated, there's no need to put them back together). Some of the visuals would not be out of place in a horror film, but probably the most disturbing part of the whole process is the realization that nothing I am doing is quite as difficult as I feel it really should be- it's kind of an "augh I just cut an animal's head off! Well, that was horrifying, when's lunch?" (On a related note, you wouldn't think it would be possible to cut the head of a grown cow with a knife you might have in your kitchen, but it absolutely is). We made some Hannibal Lector jokes while removing a brain with a saw, cut it up, chunked it in formalin and moved on. Definitely a very weird experience. The funny part is that I am so squeamish about human blood that I have to put band-aids over paper cuts to avoid looking at them. Go figure.
I had done a few cats and some wild birds in previous years, but this was my first experience with cows. Wow, there are horrors in the path lab that defy description @___@. Necropsies at the vet college are very thorough and not at all cosmetic (since the bodies get incinerated, there's no need to put them back together). Some of the visuals would not be out of place in a horror film, but probably the most disturbing part of the whole process is the realization that nothing I am doing is quite as difficult as I feel it really should be- it's kind of an "augh I just cut an animal's head off! Well, that was horrifying, when's lunch?" (On a related note, you wouldn't think it would be possible to cut the head of a grown cow with a knife you might have in your kitchen, but it absolutely is). We made some Hannibal Lector jokes while removing a brain with a saw, cut it up, chunked it in formalin and moved on. Definitely a very weird experience. The funny part is that I am so squeamish about human blood that I have to put band-aids over paper cuts to avoid looking at them. Go figure.