The Heart of a Frog

I just re-read my last post and decided I need to lay of the caffeine a bit. I also realized that I had my most awesgusting (combo of awesome and disgusting. I'm trying it out) lab to date; the cardiac lab. It is two days until Halloween, so it's the perfect time to write about it. In somewhat similar fashion to the frog leg lab, we once again sliced and diced our little Kermits in the name of science. They were drugged and a good portion of their brain was removed, but the autonomic nervous system was still in high gear. being the not-so-natural amalgam of surgeon and mad scientist that I am, I LOVED IT.

I made an incision from the chin to the abdomen, cut through the ribs at either side of the sternum, removed the pericardium and there it was... a beating heart. I have heard stories of people performing a heart massage in which a person's heart is actually in your hands as you attempt to maintain circulation in cardiac arrest cases... This is nowhere near the importance of that procedure, but it was still pretty flippin' cool. We hooked up electrodes to the sinus venosus to test the effect of electric shock on pacemaker potentials and flooded the pericardium with an assortment of neurotransmitters and temerature controls to measure their effect on heartrate and strength of contraction. Truly great stuff.

Of course, you can't help but feel bad for the poor guy, getting ripped from his lilypad only to end up on a table in a physiology lab. I have a great respect for all things living and I did have a small pang when the experiment was over, so i did say thank you in my head to Jumpy McHop Hop before unceremoniously disposing of him. Have fun in that great big swamp in the sky, Jumpy. You've earned it.