Somanautics: before the workshop

Tomorrow will be Day 1 of my six day human cadaver dissection course in San Francisco with Gil Hedley. He calls the topic of the course somanautics, and we students are somanauts.

I heard about Hedley's courses several years ago. I think it was Fall 2012. I was talking to an acquaintance I met at a meditation retreat (I think), and, I'm not sure, but I said something like, "I've always wanted to dissect a human cadaver, but you have to be a medical student to do that." And this person said, "Oh, no, actually there is this guy who offers these courses that anybody can take." I got very excited and looked up the courses, and wanted to sign up right away for the April course in San Francisco, but somehow it didn't fit into my schedule at the time.

And every autumn since then I've considered signing up for Hedley's San Francisco course the following April, but always decided it wasn't the right time. Until this past autumn. It's funny because although I clearly remember the excitement with which I wanted to sign up back in 2012, now that I'm on the threshold of the course, I no longer feel that excitement. Just a quiet, hopeful anticipation, and some anxiety that I will find it physically, mentally, and/or socially draining.

It's a requirement that we all watch 7.5 hours of dissection video before the course starts. It's in eight segments, and I'm watching segment 7 right now. By my side is an exquisite text lent me by my friend Joan, Grant's Atlas of Anatomy, Fifth Edition, 1962. The segment I'm watching is an examination of the intact viscera (internal organs). I'm finding myself unexpectedly enthralled, going back and forth between the video and the text and thrilled to see the correspondence between the cadaver and the hand drawn illustrations. Here are a few things I've been excited to learn:

• The small intestines are all connected by a planar piece of tissue called the mesentery! You can see it illustrated here. And I guess I've seen illustrations like this before, but there is nothing like seeing someone handle the mesentery and follow the entire 6 meters of the small intestine. The mesentery and intestine together are like a Chihuly glass flower, with the intestine at the outer edge of the flower-- except there is a lot more folding in the mesentery in order to have an edge 6 meters long. According to Time magazine, the mesentery is a newly discovered organ. They must mean that it is newly considered to be an organ, since it is illustrated in the 1962 text I am using.
• The liver is massive! And the nutrients and toxins gleaned from food in the small intestines travel through blood vessels through the mesentery to the mesentery root and then directly to the liver.
• The diaphragm is not a thick, dome-shaped muscle, but more like a thin, drapable sheath covering the liver and stomach. I see now that every time I breath, the diaphragm is gently rocking and massaging those organs!
• Incredibly, covering the lower abominal organs like an apron is an intricate layer of tissue I'd never heard of called the greater omentum. Apparently this tissue can be removed without major side effects, but according to Wikipedia it is involved in "infection and wound isolation" and "can often be found wrapped around areas of infection and trauma". In fact, in one of the cadavers in the dissection video, when the abdomen was opened the greater omentum was not covering the organs like an apron but was "snuggled" (Gil Hedley's word) up below the stomach. So it's a large piece of tissue that somehow travels around and helps heal whatever needs healing!

One good thing about watching these videos is that it's gotten me accustomed to seeing a human body being cut into. When the first cut was made in the first video, it was a bit shocking.

Someone suggested I keep a journal of my experience during the class. If I do, it will be here.