My last post produced more tears in my friends than I was anticipating. To counteract these tears I’m going to talk about death this time. Doesn’t quite sound like a topic to avoid tears, does it? But I promise. Trust me?
Anyone headed to a future that will involve interacting with a cadaver, the book Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers is something you should put on your reading list. In addition, anyone who hasn’t considered what they want to do with their body at the end of their earthly life, this book will give you plenty to think about. And I guess if you are just a curious person with a tough stomach go grab a copy. Emily Jarman and Stacy Rust run from this book if you ever see it, I’m guessing you would pass out before the end of the introduction.
This book discusses the numerous options available for disposing our earthly body, dabbles a bit into the soul and frequently digresses to topics that may be relevant in trivial pursuit. Ultimately, the reality is that there are positives and negatives to all the options and the way you package it can make all the difference. Would you rather be buried, cremated, make an anatomical gift, undergo water reduction or ecological burial OR would you like to decompose, be incinerated, dissected, have your tissues digested or be composted. Really none of it is pretty. I came to the same conclusion as the author, when my time comes whatever my family is comfortable with; I’m comfortable with (though family composting, or to give it a prettier name, the ecological burial, seems kinda great).
Some readers who don’t know me as well or don’t know the structure of American medical schools may wonder what made me interested in reading this book or why I would also feel the need to blog about it. Well, the first semester of medical school at Iowa leaves students with two vivid memories: their cadaver and Rubenstein biochemistry tests. On my first day of medical school, less than six hours into my graduate school career, I stood in the cement covered basement of quite possibly the creepiest building at the University of Iowa with a bone saw in my hands. Before my first day was over I would know the feeling of scalpel on skin and saw on bone and would see my first human lungs. I’m not going to go into details about my donor (the preferred term for cadaver at Iowa) because she truly was my first patient and therefore deserves confidentiality. What I will say is I think the experience of dissecting a cadaver can best be summed up by the word bittersweet. I will forever appreciate my donor and her willingness to be selfless even in death. I will forever picture her organs, nerves, and blood vessels and apply the knowledge I learned from her to my future patients. However, the actual time spent in the anatomy lab was tedious and the unexpected moments when my donor reminded me that she was indeed human were unsettling. I will never forget the day I unwrapped her hand and saw her nail polish, coincidently the color was bittersweet.
Here in Romania, gross lab is similar to in the states but has a few serious differences. First of all, there isn’t a deeded body program like back in the states. This isn’t surprising to me because even organ donation is uncommon here. Instead bodies that are not claimed become the anatomy lab cadavers. At Iowa, six of us shared a cadaver but only two are in the room dissecting at a time. Here fifteen people share a cadaver and they are all present for all parts of the dissection; though if they participate in dissecting or just observe is their choice. I’m a little blurry on the logistics of fifteen people around one cadaver because there were some points when just two seemed crowded but they make it work.
Finally, I will leave you with the most beautiful part of the book and a marketing strategy the National Donor Network needs to think about. This exert is taken from a chapter on beating-heart cadavers (cadavers who are brain dead but whose hearts are kept pumping so they can donate organs) (H is the name given to the cadaver):
“H is different. She has made three sick people well. She has brought them extra time on earth. To be able, as a dead person, to make a gift of this magnitude is phenomenal. Most people don’t manage this sort of thing while they’re alive. Cadavers like H are the dead’s heros… H has no heart, but heartless is the last thing you’d call her.”
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