Yesterday we had a biochemistry final that ended early, so my class joined another class in the anatomy lab. Although we don’t have an anatomy lab this semester, most of the students in my module loved the whole cadaver experience and so we begged to be let in to the lab. Dr. Rust was more than happy for us to join in.
The new class has a funny looking cadaver. They named her Miss Lady, and she is short and very fat. Despite the thick layer of fat over her abdomen and chest (It was pretty tough to find her breasts, they kind of disappeared into the fat), her thorax (chest cage) was tiny.
We gloved and masked up and found scalpels and joined in the dissection. The other class had opened the thorax (chest cavity) and had begun on the head and neck. They had removed Miss Lady’s skin and were cutting out the veins, arteries and nerves of the face. Miss Lady had been the recipient of a triple bypass (she had additional arteries grafted onto the side of her heart to supply the heart muscle as there had been a blockage.) Dr. Rust held up the heart.
“Would you’all look at this? This poor lady has the biggest heart I’ve ever seen.”
I kid you not, this lady’s heart was the size of a small football. Because of poor blood supply to the heart muscle, the muscle increases in size to compensate, almost closing over one of the chambers of the heart.
“Ma’am, can you take a picture?”
We took photos (I’m still unsure over how unethical this really is!) and then I picked up a scalpel and started dissecting out one of Miss Lady’s nipples. Most of the mammary (milk) tissue had atrophied (died and shrunk down) and been replaced by fat cells, but I managed to find some of the milk ducts, which appeared as thready white lines in the tissue.
Her right lung looked normal enough, but her left lung had suffered from the overgrowth of her heart and it had been compressed so it was only half the size of the right lung. The skin and fat layers had been taken off of her arms and the tiny muscles stood out starkly. She may have been fat, but she certainly wasn’t strong.
The skin of the hand is very tough (believe it or not!) and on the palms it is held down by a strong fibrous layer, so it is difficult to remove it. Her fingernails had the remnants of a French manicure, and her long slender fingers were curled up against the table.
“How come you’re not cutting?” I asked Rachel, who was standing to the side with her gloved hands held away from her body.
“I already did some.” She said.
The look on her face said “You actually expect me to do more than just perfunctory incision with my scalpel?”
Rachel will be a good gynecologist, not a surgeon…..
Later that night I lay in bed and couldn’t stop thinking about Miss Lady. I’ve always intended to donate my body to medical research, and I imagined myself lying on the table in the lab with ten students cutting into me and discussing the amount of hair on my body and the size of my heart and what had happened to my breasts. It wasn’t a fun thought.
But the fact is, I have no use for my body after I die. It’s just going to rot in the ground…. Or rot on a table. Either way it’s not going to last, but the least I can do is provide learning for some inquisitive students somewhere. And hopefully that gift of knowledge will save someone else’s life further down the road.
2 comments:
You could always write a book. The title could be "TRUST ME! things not to do." By Heather Davies. You could have a chapter called the balcony... and the newly added Dancing in the rain. It might acctually provide more people with learning experience than your body to science. hehe but in all seriousness is there any surfing over there?
You're inspiring!
Post a Comment