What did you do with your Saturday? Me? Oh, I just stuck my hands into dead people’s bodies. Poked a few livers, squeezed a few intestines, you know…the usual.

Guess what Jenn did today? She had her 8-hour cadaver workshop at UIC. Was it fun? You betcha! (That’s the Canadian in me coming out).

One thing that did disturb me was the fact that while the instructors were opening up the bodies and preparing them to be displayed, I was eating a muffin and drinking some orange juice like this was a totally normal experience for a Saturday morning. Believe it or not, formaldehyde is not common in my Saturday morning routine.

The class had about 12-15 massage therapists in it. There were three or four other students. They go to Soma (a crappy massage school here in Chicago – I only say that because they begin their clinic shifts 4-6 weeks before graduation, where as Cortiva begins at the start of the second quarter. Who has more experience? We do) We started out with some lecturing with this awesome computer software called ADAM Interactive Anatomy. I’m pretty much in love with it and it’s rumored to only cost $60-ish.

There were 8 cadavers but we were only shown 7 I believe. There was only one female. Most of them had died from some sort of cancer and one died of Parkinson’s disease. It was very interesting seeing how cancer spreads and how it changes the organs. My favorite part was looking at the optical nerve through the skull. We covered the entire body though. So I believe I touched every organ, nerve, piece of tissue and bone that I could get my hands on.

A lot of people were surprised that the cadavers didn’t look like they did in Bodyworlds. Instead they looked like this and this.

The cadavers UIC was using were just about a year old, but they can be used for up to 10 years depending on how well they are preserved. I just found that interesting. I also spoke to the coordinator and instructor about how to go about following a similar education path. So I’m pretty excited about that. The school that I’ve been looking at in Atlanta has an awesome neuroscience and behavioral biology program, which I was told was a great first step. Woo excitement!

UIC offers a two-semester dissection course that I’m seriously considering. Unfortunate for me, it is only offered on Mondays and Wednesdays (the two days of the week that I’m in school) so I might have to wait until after December. Another unfortunate part is that I’m pretty sure that this course would postpone my moving to Boston or Atlanta or wherever it is he ends up. So…we’ll have to see. Maybe Emory in Atlanta offers a similar course. That’d be swell