In the past 10 years of teaching in an anatomy lab, I have seen:
- A donor with a scrotum the size of my head. When we opened it up, we discovered it was a MASSIVE inguinal hernia and a good 1.5 ft of intestine were trapped down there.
- A donor with situs inversus totalis, whose organs were a mirror image of what we normally see (ie their heart pointed right and their liver was on the left, just for starters)
- A donor whose right common carotid artery branched off the aorta waaay over on the left hand side of the body and crossed alllll the way back across the thorax to get where it needed to be.
- A donor with 4 lobes for their right lung (should only be 3). We named the 4th lobe the Lisa Loeb, but all of the students were too young to appreciate our sparkling wit.
- A shocking variety of penile and breast implants. Y'all would not believe the number of different ways science has come up to counteract gravity.
- A couple of cases of ectopic kidneys, where a kidney didn't rise to its typical position just deep to the lowest ribs and instead stayed in the pelvis.
There is probably some other stuff that I am forgetting. Take home point is: the human body is weird and wonderful and you should learn more about yours!