BODIES, The Exhibition

Really cool. On Sunday (after lunch at the island), Scott and I went into town to see The Bodies Exhibit. It's in Honolulu for the next several months and I'd heard from several people how cool it is... so we thought it would be a good way to spend the afternoon. And we were right!

The website says the following about the Exhibit:

This Exhibition--which features actual human specimens--allows people of all ages access to sights and knowledge normally reserved only for medical professionals. Take the opportunity to peer inside yourself, to better understand how your elaborate and fascinating body works, and how you can become a more informed participant in your own health care.

It's true too. Since I've had some exposure to several of the different body systems with my previous career in pharmaceutical sales, much of it was familiar to me. But to actually see the preserved body parts was amazing. The best parts (for me) included:

~The Cardiovascular room where they showed the extent of the venous system. Not sure exactly how they did it, but apparently they were able to fill the arteries, veins and capillaries of a recently deceased person with a substance that hardens and then they melted away everything but the hardened substance... leaving you to view all the tiniest capillaries and how they serve every bit of the body. It really went beyond what I'd imagined it would look like. Amazing that our bodies create this extensive system to meet the needs of our working muscles...

~The Fetal Development room where they showed stages of fetal development from 18 days until 24 weeks. It's incredible that the cells start to differentiate within just a few weeks of conception... and then you just see it grow and become more human for the next several months. I was especially looking forward to seeing the 24 week fetus- I'm just about 27 weeks now so all I could think was, "Our baby is bigger than that inside me right now?" I thought the 24 week baby looked pretty darn big already.

Makes you realize (yet again) what an amazing miracle the human body is!