Another Cool Dissection

Emelia no longer has connected lungs. In lab today, we took off the entire front of her rib cage to expose her thoracic cavity. Then we were supposed to remove and explore the lungs. Emelia's heart was at least twice the size it normally should be (most likely from her hypertension) and was almost crushing her left lung. In the picture below, you can see what the normal relationship of heart and lungs should be:
Emelia's heart was almost all the way against her ribs on the left side it had grown so much from being overworked. Since her heart had more than doubled in size, her left lung didn't have much room to expand and I can imagine that Emelia had some trouble breathing. Because of the position of Emelia's heart over her left lung, we couldn't remove over half of her left lung until we take the heart out.

It was interesting walking around and seeing the different lungs in lab today. Some tables had cadavers who had smoked and some had cadavers who had died from lung cancer. One table found an undiagnosed tumor in the lung of their cadaver - possibly the beginning stages of cancer.

Unfortunately, I don't get to remove the heart. The other lab group is doing that part tomorrow, but my group will still get to see it after they've dissected the heart.