WILTIMS #13: Kali-Ma!!!

We had class today from 9-5. Ugh. 2 hours of histology lab, 3 hours of histology lecture, a ½ hour of anatomy lecture and finally 2½ hours of anatomy lab.

In histo lab we learned, in theory, how to differentiate between the various epithelial cells of the body. Do I remember what differentiates gall bladder epithelium from stomach mesothelium? Not a chance. But I can differentiate veins from arteries, find capillaries amongst the kidney's tubules, and differentiate simple from stratified layers, squamous from cuboidal cells, and columnar from pseudostratified organisation. I'm calling that progress.

Histo lecture was mind-numbingly boring. This was in part because the professor, though obviously brilliant, could use work on his oratory skills, and partly because much of the material was basic review for someone with my cell biology background.

The afternoon, however was worth the wait. We left off yesterday having cracked the chest, removed the lungs and exposed the heart from the pericardium. Today we removed the heart and dissected the coronary arteries, coronary veins, the right atrium, and the posterior mediastinum (the area behind the heart). The heart is an amazing organ and it has a difficult architecture to wrap your mind around with 2D images. Holding it in your hand and manipulating it is by far the best way to really grasp (ba-dum-ch) the intricacies of its structure and the comparative orientations of its components.

Finally, upon returning to my apartment-dorm hybrid I made my first real, involved meal since moving in - tomato-spinach risotto. Om nom nom.

Intelligent design my ass...

TIL: 70% of people have right-dominant hearts, meaning their posterior interventricular artery is supplied with blood from the right coronary artery. In another 10% this artery is supplied by the circumflex coronary artery (itself a branch of the left coronary artery) making the heart left-dominant, while the remaining 20% are co-dominant, with an anastomosis (reconnection of separate parts of a branching system) connecting the two sources.

Also, the larynx is innervated by the vagus nerve (tenth cranial nerve), but only after the vagus reaches all the way down to the aorta. There the recurrent laryngeal nerve splits off and heads back up and out of the chest, all for no particular reason. Essentially, the nerve gets tangled around the great arteries during development - and that's if everything goes to plan.