Cadavers

I just had the most fabulous evening. As a 1st year member of the Pathology club I got to attend a suturing lab this evening. About 15 students were in attendance with one of the small animal surgeons and a couple interns. Every student got a cat cadaver from the local SPCA. We learned how to perform laparotomy's (exploratory gut surgery), spays, neuters bladder stone removals. We then got to stitch up our cadavers to our hearts content. This was the first time practicing on real tissue and it so different then our Styrofoam. Real tissue is so elastic, and all the different layers are so near how they vary in texture and density. Learning how to sew each individual layer and the preferential stitch pattern was amazing! Unfortunately this was held in the pathology lab which is a bio secure area so I couldn't bring in my camera but wow! I can't wait till 3rd year and we learn how to do these kind of things for real on live animals!
Got all my midterms back finally, marks ranged from 69 to 85. Never failed and was only below average on 2 out of 6. Survived round 1, round 2 is knocking.....