a trip to see cadavers.

Went to the Museum of Life and Science in Greensboro today with my mom and my sister and saw the Bodies Revealed exhibit.  First off, let me just say.. I have this thing with dead people.  I've never been to a funeral, never seen a dead person (heck, I've never even had a family pet die.. well, hamsters, but they're a dime-a-dozen..).  Death to me is eerie and odd, BUT..  I respect it, you know?  I mean.. if you think about it (if you even want to think about it this way) we're all dying anyway.  

But anyhoo...  this exhibition was incredible.  We walked into a room first where we were greeted by a small statured (is this a word??) man whose skin had been removed and whose musculature was very nicely revealed.  He was upright, and standing silently.  What was cool about this exhibit, also, was that the cadavers weren't encased in a glass case... they were out in the open... we could have touched them if we wanted to (but it wasn't allowed).  It was so cool to see the parts of the body that we don't ever think about.  There was SO much there: cross-sectioned parts of the body including the brain and an ENTIRE BODY, healthy and diseased organs, embryos at different stages (yes, real embryos that all perished because of complications during pregnancy), and AN ENTIRE HUMAN CIRCULATORY SYSTEM!

This has no bones, tissue, muscles, or anything except for veins - this is the entire circulatory system removed from a body.  How cool is that??  

Now, even though the exhibit was SUPER cool and very interesting, it still was a little odd.  I mean, c'mon.. we're not any different from the bodies we were looking at.. all the cross-sectioned pieces, all the interesting details that were highlighted are all inside of us.  It's silly, I know, to talk about such common knowledge - but it's still odd.  I mean.. every single one of the bodies I looked at today had eyebrows still, AND eye lashes on their eyelids.  One even had hair in their ear (and I say ear, singular, because it was only one half of a head)!!  They also had fake eyeballs in their head.  I know that seems unimportant and kinda like, duh.. of course they have eyebrows and hair and eyes... but.. they were dead...  and I felt that the bodies were being presented in such a straight-forward, medical, formal, impersonal way, that eyebrows and eyelashes made them too personal.  And the eyes animated them in a way that was way too real for me to handle at times; like, I kept finding myself studying the faces more than the bodies themselves.  I actually couldn't stare at their faces that long.. because I was sure they were going to move (and I would have fainted instantly if that had happend.. just saying...).  I know hair and eyes seems odd to be weirded out by, especially in an exhibit where bodies have been cut open and revealed in very.. revealing ways (ha!), but it reminded me that they were people.  And.. it was odd.  

Just wanted to share my experience with you.  I wish I could have taken pictures, but it wasn't allowed.  They actually made us turn our phones off before we went into the exhibit.  But if you want to see what I saw, just Google search "Bodies Revealed" and you get some pretty cool images.  

I'm off to bed!  Hopefully my next blog will be as interesting as this one!  (or maybe I'm the only one who thought it was cool...).

<3 A.