Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Bodies Exhibition- Las Vegas

I got back from my weekend in Vegas last night. Overall I consider the trip a great success. Certainly not anxiety free, but I had no full blown panic attacks.

Here is what I did to help me this time. I printed out my last post that I had prepared ahead of time and kept it in my back pocket at all times. I read it every morning before I left the hotel room. On the first day we were eating in a food court environment at Gameworks and I started to feel nauseous. I am pretty sure it was anxiety provoked. I just stopped eating. When my friends asked me what was wrong I simply said I didn’t feel well. Then when I could feel the nausea subside a little, I just stuck with the simple rice that I had to get something down. The next morning I woke up panic stricken at 5:30 am. I used to feel this every morning when I would wake up. I am glad this happened when it did because I was able to lie there in bed and talk myself through it until I could fall back asleep and feel better about it. There were several other small instances where I could feel it creeping up but I was able to get distracted or simply rest until it passed. I sat a lot on the trip because we did a lot of walking and I got tired a lot. After a good two hours of walking I start to feel like I have a bag of weights strapped around my waist that I carry around now.

We had a lot of fun, saw a lot of things, gambled away lots of money, etc. But the coolest part of the trip I want to share with all of you in more detail.



It is called the Bodies Exhibit and it is in different cities all over the country. It’s about $30 a person but if you are cheap like us, we were able to sit at a Timeshare presentation for 2 hours and they fed us lunch and gave us the tickets for free. Well worth it. The exhibit is made up of real human cadavers that they have soaked in a solution to help preserve them. They are skinned so that you can see the muscles and bone and tendons and organs etc and placed in artistic poses to demonstrate how the body works. It sounds morbid or gross but it was really cool. It’s controversial in the media about whether it’s appropriate or not but I thought it was very informative and artistic. I wanted to take pictures but they wouldn’t allow any photography. They display a brain that has had a stroke and the inside is all black as if it had been burned. They display lungs with and without cancer, fetal development in every week of the first 16 weeks, the circulatory system with just the veins from your face, arms, legs, etc. and so much more. You walk away wanting to take better care of your body and realizing just what everything looks like. I recommend going if it is out near you or you have the opportunity presented to you.

Here is a quick video to give you an idea of what you can see:


bodies exhibition


Has anyone else seen this exhibit and if so were you impressed like I was or did it upset you? Even if you haven't seen it does the idea of this seem cool or does it offend you?I am curious to how others feel about it.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yes I saw this exhibit in LV. At the time I thought it was cool but later when I found out about the controversy regarding the lack of knowledge of where the cadavers came from and that they could be executed political prisoners from communist China I regretted going. I realized that there is no definitive proof they were political prisoners but the fact that it is vague tends to make me believe the worst. I think people should be informed about it before they see it so they can make a choice. All though its interesting the idea that some innocent person may have been killed because the opposed the state creates a moral dilemma.

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