The smell of adipose tissue is revolting.
There is no nice way to say that, and I know that I have issues with fat on a psychological and physical level that I usually choose not to share with the world, but will talk a bit about below. Just a bit, not the whole, ugly bunch of details. Yet the cadaver I chose to work on when we divided ourselves into groups was that of Ruth's, who was morbidly obese at death.
To add to the irony that should otherwise be a joyous day, being Fat Tuesday (and I mean this with no pun intended, yet I feel horrible by even referencing it and I just realized while typing this that GOOD LORD JENNIFER, what did you just say?), in psychology class we discussed eating disorders. When I was overseas, between the precocious ages of 13-15, and thrust into the world of being a commercial model, the likelihood of coming down with a body dysmorphic disorder is great. At 14 I developed anorexia after a friend's cousin did something to me that is unmentionable. Add the stress of that to my work as a model at a young age in a country where you can't even speak the language and are separated from your parents, your end result is the perfect recipe for an eating disorder.
I hid it well for one thing because I wore bulky clothing, often hiding myself in a sweater or cardigan worn over my Catholic school uniform. Mind you now, this was in the Philippines, a tropical rainforest country which is ON THE EQUATOR, so wearing a wool sweater or cardigan is not something one does out of necessity due to the weather. At the time I was ill, I was also living in a dormitory run by nuns on the school campus. Thank you, St. Joseph's College, for helping me hide this from my parents.
Looking back on my childhood, I was normal weight. I became overweight recently and I'm not even close to obese, but my old, battered self esteem is beating me up for the weight gain. I am dealing with it in a healthy fashion, choosing instead to focus on getting my exercise on rather than go the binge/purge method or crack pipe method of some other women I know (all of whom will remain anonymous). I have fat issues. I am, and always will be, in recovery.
This part of my psyche ties back in with Ruth because I see myself in her as a worst-case scenario. I do not ever want to let myself go to that extreme. I have some women in my family who are morbidly obese, and I want to take them to see Ruth and say, "You need to take better care of yourself or this will be you!" I feel a sense of sorrow as I scrape away layer upon layer of adipose. I apologize to her and Susan instantly pipes up, "She's happy. Look at her, she's finally losing all of that fat! She's smiling!" I love Susan. She's got a fantastic personality and I instantly feel better.
I bring my new camera to class, a Nikon D60 (not the D90 I coveted, as I spent $600 less by going with this model), and Jerry says he'll take photos and do general assisting for both groups. Kevin likes this idea and they start taking photos of all the saved specimens. I am talking with Susan, Cynthia, Andrea, and Tammy, and I hear Kevin telling Jerry what muscles on their cadaver he wants photographed.
Muscles. The other group is already identifying muscles on Mr. B. And here we are, still clearing up fat.
I put my scalpel down. I look at Ruth and consult with Susan and Cynthia on some wild idea I have for today's clearing, and I feel like a bossy barbarian bitch by doing so. It had to be done though, and I'll take the bitch blame for it if the ladies around me today found me difficult to deal with. I am deeply concerned that at the pace we are going at, three ladies with a penchant for perfection, that by week 12 of 16 we will still be clearing through fat if we try and focus on making her pretty. Let's dig down with our scalpels, clear out the majority of the fat, and then we can spend time scraping away painstakingly afterwards. I just want to keep up with the other group, who are already to the point where they are identifying structures, far more structures, than just inches of adipose.
I call Kevin over. I ask him if it's all right for us to cut down through her abdomen and start clearing away fat. He says to go for it, the faster we get it done the better. Maybe this was a mistake, because he just gave the dark side of me the green light to go ahead and go all out. I begin making deep cuts into her abdominal skin, following the lines that were already made by her folds. During embalming, her skin had folded in such a way that it laid out the perfect blueprint for us to make our cuts. After making the initial cuts, Susan, and I start going deep into her abdomen to peel back the skin. Cynthia said that she would be working on cleaning up her face and neck, focusing on finishing the area around her sternocledomastoid muscle. Susan held up her flap of skin and I helped her cut underneath since she was not at a good angle to get at it herself. I was able to do my area on my own, but I attribute my height advantage to being able to get at a better angle for scalpel work.
The sound of our scalpels cutting away fat sounded much like layers of saran wrap being cut with a blade. It had a weird whoosh sound to it. Every few minutes we'd have to turn away, as gas pockets of embalming fluid mixed in with the odor of the adipose itself would sometimes rise up and catch us by surprise. Kevin himself had to leave the room for a breath of fresh air. Eventually I had to also. The smell was coming through my mask, and it was making my eyes water.
She had layers of fibrous fat, which was brownish red as opposed to the normal deep yellow of her adipose. Kevin couldn't tell us what it was, we just equated the consistency to gristle. Some parts were so dense that I was afraid I was cutting into muscle, but I was confident of how deep I was going, and I knew that I still had about an inch of fat to go before I hit muscle.
They say that you learn something about yourself every day. This class has not let me down in that aspect, as every Tuesday for the last four weeks I have learned something new about my resolve, determination, and ability to objectify something just to get the job done. I also learned today how good I am with a scalpel. I was clearing out the superficial fascia with quickness and a confidence I didn't know I had. I joked to my table that in order to speed things up, I was just going to go on Iron Chef speed. Sure enough, I was. Soon after I was cutting out chunks of adipose tissue in sheets roughly the size of my hand. My brain deals with the horrors of what I'm doing by injecting odd humor into the equation, and my brain had said, "Adipose steaks, cut to order."
An hour later, I have cleared out an area in her left inguinal region that is definitely one thin, connective tissue layer away from her rectus abdominus. By this time the smell of her adipose has filled the room, and Kevin tells us to start cleaning up early. It's 30 minutes sooner than we normally begin cleanup, but my table is overwhelmed and Ruth's body is starting to give up its embalmed gases. Jerry helped us bag up two full bags of fat, and later on he tells me that there's at least 15 pounds of fat in the larger trash bag that Kevin stashed the fat bags in.
I'm too dizzy to help with scrubbing the utensils. I help wipe down Ruth, wet her with the solution, and I cover her with the muslin and wet it down. Andrea and I wrap her up in her plastic, and Tammy finishes sealing up her body bag. My face has been 3 inches away from Ruth for two hours, and I'm premenstrual and have not yet eaten. Between the malodorous atmosphere and my own physical pangs (including a sore biceps brachii long and short head from lifting weights all week) I just lean up against the wall and wait for the sink.
Kevin has a rule in his class. Nobody gets sick in Dr. Petti's class. I am not one to vomit but I'm so on the verge of passing out at that moment, that I lean up against the wall and just breathe. But breathing is not pleasant with the air in the room. I wash my hands as soon as the sink is available, and I rush out the door of the prosectorium and the anatomy lab.
I take in deep breaths of air through my nose, trying to clear out the lingering odor. It won't go away. Susan comes out and I can't recall now what she said to me, but she hurries off, and as of this writing I feel bad that I don't remember what she said, or if I even said bye. I just wanted to get the hell out of there at that moment.
Jerry and I get to my place, and he has to stay and pick up the boys while I go to Livescan to get my fingerprints done. I had just been accepted to be a guide for the upcoming Body Worlds exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum and I had to finish the background check. I want to apologize to everybody I encounter, because they are looking at me like I smell. They do that BECAUSE I DO SMELL. The lady who is taking my fingerprints tells me that I smell very "chemically" and I tell her that I'm sorry I had no time to shower after gross anatomy lab. She finishes my fingerprints as fast as she could and sends me on my way.
I drive home as fast as I am comfortable with breaking the speed limit. I don't go over 80mph because I still try and be safe. I get home and the first thing I do is ask Jerry to stay and talk with me while I shower, because I have a lot on my mind that I need to process.
I take as hot of a shower as I can withstand, and I try not to cry while talking to him. Like I have said before, I am not one to cry, but I'm premenstrual and the events of today starting with psychology class led to this climax of brain thoughts. I realize that I am scrubbing my skin almost raw with the washcloth, trying to get rid of Ruth's embalmed adipose smell off of my body. I finally have it out of my nostrils, and thanks to the mask and chewing gum I do not have it in my throat, but it lingers on my hands. In my haste to get things done today, I cut through four pairs of my gloves.
I tell Jerry that I am wracked by guilt because for the first time since I even considered taking this class, that I am disgusted by my cadaver. I love the spirit of Ruth. She is the most benevolent human I have ever come to know, along with Mike and Mr. B (the other cadavers), and because of her generosity I am able to learn more about the human body than the majority of the world will ever get to know. I love her and appreciate her gift. I am thankful and grateful beyond words for her, but I feel like absolute shit because for a moment I am disgusted by her and what I had to do today. I feel like an ingrate, and I am crushed by an overwhelming sense of Catholic guilt.
Jerry says not to be disgusted at Ruth, but it's ok to be disgusted at the task we had to do today. It was gruesome, and on the way to the parking lot the girls working on Mr. B both commented to me that they're glad they're not working on my cadaver. They said it with a mix of sympathy and awe, and even I acknowledge that it's not a task for the light hearted or weak of stomach.
So here I am now, typing away at this entry, wondering whether I want to make it public or not. I smell clean, like vanilla soap and shampoo, and my hands do not reek of formalin. My sons come up to me and embrace me as if nothing is amiss. Rome even massaged my sore shoulder and asked me if I felt better. Jerry says he'll stay with me tonight and I say ok, since I could use the company and both talk and type therapy will help me get this burden off my chest.
I also got my period.
Physically and mentally, I am experiencing catharsis.
Showing posts with label cadaver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cadaver. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Breasts
From womb to tomb, men and women alike are fascinated with breasts.
They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, symmetries. The size and relation of the areola to nipple with regards to the rest of the breast can also vary, with some being as tiny as dimes and others being the size of an Eisenhower silver dollar.
Breasts to the extremely young are a means of sustenance, a way of obtaining nutrients before they are able to masticate solid food. This is not something unique to humans, as it occurs across all mammalian species everywhere in the world. To humans, and maybe some species of primates, breasts are also regarded as an aesthetically pleasing object that embodies sex. Ancient civilizations have left behind artifacts in the form of cave drawings, effigies, and statuary or idolatry depicting powerful women with emphasized breasts. Renaissance artists like Boticelli and Da Vinci had made masterpieces that focused on the female form, with their flowing hair and bare breasts. Venus de Milo was born of the sea, with her long flowing locks barely covering her ample, round breasts and her mons pubis. The new age of media following the industrial revolution gave way to what is now commonly known as pornography, but in the early days of printed nudes, most of what was revealed and captured on film was limited to the bare breast.
We are a species that is fascinated with breasts, and that's what made it very difficult for me to cut into Ruth's breast tissue as we prepared to take her body into deeper stages of dissection.
Before Cynthia, Susan and I began to cut open her breasts, we consulted with Kevin just to make sure that what we were about to do would be to his liking. Andrea and Tammy were going to stay focused on cleaning up Ruth's right leg, uncovering the musculature that lay underneath her padding of fat. The task of what to do with Ruth's breasts was left to us.
I had been working on Ruth's left side, and Cynthia and Susan on the right. Cynthia did a lot of work cleaning up underlying fascia on the right, with Susan doing a wonderful job of helping both sides with the endless amounts of scraping and scooping of adipose. It sounds crass, but that's what it is. Cynthia's class had dissected her face, and she wanted to finish what had been started but there was so much to do with the chest area that she stopped working on the face to help get us started. Call it scalpel shyness, if anything. Cynthia didn't have it.
It had been decided that since her right breast was smaller than the left, that we would cut around the areola and remove the skin surrounding the rest of her breast, leaving it intact. The left one was more substantial so what we would do is a mid saggital cut through the areola and nipple, down to the muscle. We would remove half of the breast and leave the other half intact, so that one could view it and see how breast tissue differs from the underlying muscle.
I did the initial cut through Ruth's areola and nipple. I apologized to Ruth, even though I know she felt no pain. I felt odd doing this to a woman's breast, even if she was dead and had donated her body to science so that students like me could learn to heal by dismantling the dead. I kept right on going, and by this time I was on full autopilot mode. I removed the skin from the breast to the midline, then braced myself to make the first cut into her breast tissue to remove the one half. Her breast tissue looked just like the rest of her adipose tissue, but more fibrous. I quickly changed thoughts, as I don't want to associate my own breasts with cold, greasy, yellow adipose.
With full confidence, I pushed my scalpel through the mound of exposed breast tissue. I gasped. Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of the blade as it pushed through. It's very hard to describe, but the best analogy I can come up with is that it feels like taking an exacto knife and cutting through packing peanuts surrounded by layer upon layer of bubble wrap. I slid my scalpel halfway down her breast tissue and then looked at Susan, who was patiently scraping fat and helping pretty up exposed areas. She looked at me and I told her, "Susan, you HAVE to feel this."
I traded roles with Susan and let her finish the removal of the medial half of Ruth's deeply exposed breast. For the next 30 minutes, I scraped up fat, cleaned up exposed structures, and talked with Susan and Cynthia about how we all own a Miata. Anything to ignore the weird nagging thought in my head about cutting up a stranger's breast.
Later on Susan and I switched spots again, and I started cleaning up further below the left breast and making plans for what I wanted us to do for Ruth next week. Jerry's group was further along with their cadaver, since he was a leaner guy, and they were already at the point where a good amount of his musculature was exposed. I wanted to, with Kevin's permission of course, start aggressively cleaning up the fat on the frontal side of her body, and get to where we were also looking at muscle.
With this aggressive attitude in mind, I started exposing her left pectoralis major muscle. At first I wasn't sure that I'd gone so deep that I'd hit muscle, but as I kept scraping away fat I started seeing reddish fibers follow my scalpel. Sure enough I'd hit muscle. I started snipping away at the fibers that were stubbornly holding her adipose to the muscle, but finally had given up on the tediousness of the job. With a self taught culinary background in mind, I took one of the dull dissecting knives and started rapidly slicing away at the connective fibers. There was a voice in my head that started mocking me, in a singsong voice, "Jen is a butcher, Jen is a butcher." I had to shut off that internal voice and keep on going.
Minutes later, I'd exposed her entire left pectoralis major muscle, with the very top portion of her rectus abdominus muscle peeking out under the 1/4 inch of exposed rectus sheath. I called Kevin over to look and he simply said, "Good work." I breathed a sigh of relief. His opinion of my work in this class means so much to me for some reason, and I want to make sure that I'm not only doing his teaching justice, but that I'm also not wasting the time of my group mates, nor disrespecting the generosity and deep altrusim of Ruth.
I stood back and looked at my work. Her muscle was exposed beautifully. Ruth had large muscles underneath all those layers of adipose, and we were beginning to reveal them to the world. Soon afterwards we covered her with a linen sheet, wet her down with embalming fluid, said our thanks, and walked out of the lab one by one.
Even in death, her breasts did not fail to amaze us. We marveled over them, cupped them in our hands, and treated them as lovingly as we could given the tasks we set out to do. Her breasts taught us new things about our own, things we could not possibly have learned without Ruth.
Before I wrote this, I held my own breasts in the shower and thought about hers. Mine feel different; mine are warm, alive, still soft and pleasing to the touch. But underneath it all, my breasts are like Ruth's. I know what the breast is composed of now, in a way that most people will never understand. I have done things to a woman's breast that most people will never be able to replicate. The understanding I have gained from this experience will last my entire lifetime, but as of this moment I'm still trying to get over the weird feeling that I have done something unspeakable; that I'm guilty of debauchery.
Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
They come in all shapes, sizes, colors, symmetries. The size and relation of the areola to nipple with regards to the rest of the breast can also vary, with some being as tiny as dimes and others being the size of an Eisenhower silver dollar.
Breasts to the extremely young are a means of sustenance, a way of obtaining nutrients before they are able to masticate solid food. This is not something unique to humans, as it occurs across all mammalian species everywhere in the world. To humans, and maybe some species of primates, breasts are also regarded as an aesthetically pleasing object that embodies sex. Ancient civilizations have left behind artifacts in the form of cave drawings, effigies, and statuary or idolatry depicting powerful women with emphasized breasts. Renaissance artists like Boticelli and Da Vinci had made masterpieces that focused on the female form, with their flowing hair and bare breasts. Venus de Milo was born of the sea, with her long flowing locks barely covering her ample, round breasts and her mons pubis. The new age of media following the industrial revolution gave way to what is now commonly known as pornography, but in the early days of printed nudes, most of what was revealed and captured on film was limited to the bare breast.
We are a species that is fascinated with breasts, and that's what made it very difficult for me to cut into Ruth's breast tissue as we prepared to take her body into deeper stages of dissection.
Before Cynthia, Susan and I began to cut open her breasts, we consulted with Kevin just to make sure that what we were about to do would be to his liking. Andrea and Tammy were going to stay focused on cleaning up Ruth's right leg, uncovering the musculature that lay underneath her padding of fat. The task of what to do with Ruth's breasts was left to us.
I had been working on Ruth's left side, and Cynthia and Susan on the right. Cynthia did a lot of work cleaning up underlying fascia on the right, with Susan doing a wonderful job of helping both sides with the endless amounts of scraping and scooping of adipose. It sounds crass, but that's what it is. Cynthia's class had dissected her face, and she wanted to finish what had been started but there was so much to do with the chest area that she stopped working on the face to help get us started. Call it scalpel shyness, if anything. Cynthia didn't have it.
It had been decided that since her right breast was smaller than the left, that we would cut around the areola and remove the skin surrounding the rest of her breast, leaving it intact. The left one was more substantial so what we would do is a mid saggital cut through the areola and nipple, down to the muscle. We would remove half of the breast and leave the other half intact, so that one could view it and see how breast tissue differs from the underlying muscle.
I did the initial cut through Ruth's areola and nipple. I apologized to Ruth, even though I know she felt no pain. I felt odd doing this to a woman's breast, even if she was dead and had donated her body to science so that students like me could learn to heal by dismantling the dead. I kept right on going, and by this time I was on full autopilot mode. I removed the skin from the breast to the midline, then braced myself to make the first cut into her breast tissue to remove the one half. Her breast tissue looked just like the rest of her adipose tissue, but more fibrous. I quickly changed thoughts, as I don't want to associate my own breasts with cold, greasy, yellow adipose.
With full confidence, I pushed my scalpel through the mound of exposed breast tissue. I gasped. Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of the blade as it pushed through. It's very hard to describe, but the best analogy I can come up with is that it feels like taking an exacto knife and cutting through packing peanuts surrounded by layer upon layer of bubble wrap. I slid my scalpel halfway down her breast tissue and then looked at Susan, who was patiently scraping fat and helping pretty up exposed areas. She looked at me and I told her, "Susan, you HAVE to feel this."
I traded roles with Susan and let her finish the removal of the medial half of Ruth's deeply exposed breast. For the next 30 minutes, I scraped up fat, cleaned up exposed structures, and talked with Susan and Cynthia about how we all own a Miata. Anything to ignore the weird nagging thought in my head about cutting up a stranger's breast.
Later on Susan and I switched spots again, and I started cleaning up further below the left breast and making plans for what I wanted us to do for Ruth next week. Jerry's group was further along with their cadaver, since he was a leaner guy, and they were already at the point where a good amount of his musculature was exposed. I wanted to, with Kevin's permission of course, start aggressively cleaning up the fat on the frontal side of her body, and get to where we were also looking at muscle.
With this aggressive attitude in mind, I started exposing her left pectoralis major muscle. At first I wasn't sure that I'd gone so deep that I'd hit muscle, but as I kept scraping away fat I started seeing reddish fibers follow my scalpel. Sure enough I'd hit muscle. I started snipping away at the fibers that were stubbornly holding her adipose to the muscle, but finally had given up on the tediousness of the job. With a self taught culinary background in mind, I took one of the dull dissecting knives and started rapidly slicing away at the connective fibers. There was a voice in my head that started mocking me, in a singsong voice, "Jen is a butcher, Jen is a butcher." I had to shut off that internal voice and keep on going.
Minutes later, I'd exposed her entire left pectoralis major muscle, with the very top portion of her rectus abdominus muscle peeking out under the 1/4 inch of exposed rectus sheath. I called Kevin over to look and he simply said, "Good work." I breathed a sigh of relief. His opinion of my work in this class means so much to me for some reason, and I want to make sure that I'm not only doing his teaching justice, but that I'm also not wasting the time of my group mates, nor disrespecting the generosity and deep altrusim of Ruth.
I stood back and looked at my work. Her muscle was exposed beautifully. Ruth had large muscles underneath all those layers of adipose, and we were beginning to reveal them to the world. Soon afterwards we covered her with a linen sheet, wet her down with embalming fluid, said our thanks, and walked out of the lab one by one.
Even in death, her breasts did not fail to amaze us. We marveled over them, cupped them in our hands, and treated them as lovingly as we could given the tasks we set out to do. Her breasts taught us new things about our own, things we could not possibly have learned without Ruth.
Before I wrote this, I held my own breasts in the shower and thought about hers. Mine feel different; mine are warm, alive, still soft and pleasing to the touch. But underneath it all, my breasts are like Ruth's. I know what the breast is composed of now, in a way that most people will never understand. I have done things to a woman's breast that most people will never be able to replicate. The understanding I have gained from this experience will last my entire lifetime, but as of this moment I'm still trying to get over the weird feeling that I have done something unspeakable; that I'm guilty of debauchery.
Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
The First Cut
Today we began the dissections.
Before I go into detail, I'm going to describe the earlier part of my morning. Maybe someday when I look back on all of this, I can deduce that some of what I'm feeling can be attributed to extenuating factors outside of the prosectorium.
I probably chose a bad day to do the requisite 12 hour fast for the blood tests my physician ordered for me, because not only did missing my morning coffee set me off on a bad note, I also had to forgo my usual breakfast of dried fruit and walnuts. Caffiene, fiber, proteins and omega 3 fatty acids baby, it's the breakfast of champions.
I was already feeling frazzled from returning late from Monday night's Kinesiology class, only to have to rush to school early Tuesday morning only to find the parking lot full. We parked over by Home Depot and practically ran to my Psychology class, which I ended up being about 5 minutes late for.
The topic in Psychology was stress. This was no mere coincidence, as I planned my semester around my Anatomy class. I would take Bio230 with Dan Trubovitz, and Bio232 with Kevin Petti, who I felt would be an extra boost, given Dan's lax teaching methods. I also decided this semester to retake Psych101, which I felt would help convince me that I wasn't sociopathic or mentally unstable for taking Bio232.
The past 3 days leading up to today, I'd been dreaming about the cadavers. It's always the cadaver of Mike, which is the one I'm most familiar with. I don't know what his face looks like, but in my dreams I see it. It's gray and emaciated, with the superficial fascia removed and only the musculature showing. The only dermal layers left on his face are the layers surrounding the orbit of the eye, and the lips. It's a ghastly sight in my dreams, but the ghoulishness is offset by his friendly demeanor. In my dreams, Mike is animated, warm, and alive... as warm and alive as a cadaver could be. Needless to say, I haven't been sleeping too well the past few nights.
After Psych class, I head over to the anatomy lab and wait for Kevin to open the doors. I lean over the railing and look out at the clear, blue sky. It's amazing how clear today was, for the past several days were filled with dark clouds, heavy with rain. It's cold and windy, and I wish I'd brought a jacket. I would lie if I said I wasn't nervous.
After Kevin let us into the prosectorium, we look at the harvested specimens once more. He says that it's up to us to be leaders and determine how we want to go about opening up our cadavers, to see if there's anything we can find that would be worth harvesting and saving. We wet down the specimens with embalming fluid and put them away.
We push Mike's cadaver aside for the meantime. We are to work on the middle cadaver (the male cancer patient with the chemo portal) and the newer cadaver (female cancer patient, obese). We split up into two groups of 5, pick a cadaver, and get to work. Kevin read us the death certificate of the female cadaver, and even though I saw her the day she arrived at Miramar, I didn't know all the details as I do today. She died in June of 2008 at the age of 60. We received her on November 4, 2008, so she's relatively fresh. She died of malignant lymphoma. We all wondered if we would see signs of cancer in her lymph nodes. We won't know until we open her up.
Kevin shows us how to score the skin before making our initial deep cuts. He shows us how to scrape the adipose from the dermis, leaving behind the honeycomb shaped structures of the dermal papillae. My group mates are Susan, Andrea (different from my Bio160 lab partner), Cynthia, and I think the last one is Natalie. Her name escapes me. Cynthia has taken the Bio232 class before and has worked on the face of our cadaver, prepping her for the head and neck seminar Kevin hosted over the winter break.
I like to say I was mentally prepared for the unveiling of her face. But it was already cut up and I wasn't expecting to see her right away, but it is what it is. You sink or swim. I was thinking we'd see her face towards the end of the semester, but I digress.
She looked like she was in pain, as if the cancer that ravaged her body decided that she would have no peace even at the very end. Her face was frozen in a painful grimace, her eyes shut, and a brownish liquid coming out of one corner, as if they were tears stained with the ugliness of death. Her lips were cut and split, and her facial skin was cut in sections so that it could be reflected from the body to show the underlying structures. I instinctively take my gloved hand and wipe away the tear-like secretion, then realize that she no longer feels any pain. She feels no sadness, she feels nothing. She has moved on.
We start to work on her torso, taking the time to reflect the epidermis and dermis, removing the adipose tissue from the underlying fascia. We chit chat with each other to ease the tension, to get to know each other, and to make this gruesome task more bearable. There is so much adipose along her sternal body alone that it takes us the better part of two hours to clear a section three inches across and seven inches down. We scrape away fat with scalpel blades and a metal scraper. It is a tiring and tedious task, and at one point Susan asked if we could use a spoon to remove the fat. Andrea and Tammy are working on her lower right leg, reflecting the skin along the anterior tibia, distal to the patella.
I ask Kevin what we should do with her breasts. She has substantial breasts, more than what usually makes it into the Miramar College prosectorium. The last female cadaver we had was a tiny, petite little thing, and she was relatively flat. Kevin comes to my group and we discuss what we can do with her breasts. I suggest skinning one of them to show what the breast looks like underneath the epidermis and dermis, and he agrees. He amends my suggestion by saying we cut around the areola and leave it intact. With the other one we agree to make a midsaggital cut through the areola and nipple, so that the breast tissue looks like what you'd see in a textbook illustration. We talk about her feminine parts as if they were objects, and not as if they were anything human at one point. I wonder if this means that I'm getting better at objectifying the tasks put forth, and learning how to separate my personal beliefs from my clinical side in a manner much deeper than I've ever had to before; or does it mean that I'm learning to be callous and uncaring?
Towards the end of our time, we have removed about 3/4 of a cup's worth of adipose tissue. I make a comment that it looks like ghee. Kevin asked, "Well, what is butter made of?" We all answer in unison, "Fat."
Somebody asked what we were having for lunch. I say anything without butter.
We clean up after our time is over, and we all head out of the prosectorium. I say bye to my classmates, and we walk out with Kevin. The first thing I do outside is look at the mountains in the distance, and inhale a large breath of cold, winter air.
I don't know what to think. I'm feeling lightheaded and overwhelmed. Jerry takes me straight to Kaiser Permanente so I can get my labs drawn, and from there he takes me to lunch. By the time I took a bite out of something it was 3:15PM. My last meal was the night before, at 10PM, seventeen hours prior. I instantly feel better, but I can't get my mind off of my cadaver.
She died young. She looked as if she were still in pain, and I couldn't help but feel that her grimace in death was also in anticipation of she guessed might be done to her body post mortem. She knew that she was donating her body to science, and I know that I should sleep in peace knowing that I'm not defiling her in any manner, and that she is being treated with reverence and respect. She was one of us, she is us, she is who we could be, and yet she is so much more than the sum of her body parts and structures. She is benevolent, she is generous, and she has given every student who steps into that room a gift that so very few are willing to give.
Great teacher, I give you the name of Ruth.
Before I go into detail, I'm going to describe the earlier part of my morning. Maybe someday when I look back on all of this, I can deduce that some of what I'm feeling can be attributed to extenuating factors outside of the prosectorium.
I probably chose a bad day to do the requisite 12 hour fast for the blood tests my physician ordered for me, because not only did missing my morning coffee set me off on a bad note, I also had to forgo my usual breakfast of dried fruit and walnuts. Caffiene, fiber, proteins and omega 3 fatty acids baby, it's the breakfast of champions.
I was already feeling frazzled from returning late from Monday night's Kinesiology class, only to have to rush to school early Tuesday morning only to find the parking lot full. We parked over by Home Depot and practically ran to my Psychology class, which I ended up being about 5 minutes late for.
The topic in Psychology was stress. This was no mere coincidence, as I planned my semester around my Anatomy class. I would take Bio230 with Dan Trubovitz, and Bio232 with Kevin Petti, who I felt would be an extra boost, given Dan's lax teaching methods. I also decided this semester to retake Psych101, which I felt would help convince me that I wasn't sociopathic or mentally unstable for taking Bio232.
The past 3 days leading up to today, I'd been dreaming about the cadavers. It's always the cadaver of Mike, which is the one I'm most familiar with. I don't know what his face looks like, but in my dreams I see it. It's gray and emaciated, with the superficial fascia removed and only the musculature showing. The only dermal layers left on his face are the layers surrounding the orbit of the eye, and the lips. It's a ghastly sight in my dreams, but the ghoulishness is offset by his friendly demeanor. In my dreams, Mike is animated, warm, and alive... as warm and alive as a cadaver could be. Needless to say, I haven't been sleeping too well the past few nights.
After Psych class, I head over to the anatomy lab and wait for Kevin to open the doors. I lean over the railing and look out at the clear, blue sky. It's amazing how clear today was, for the past several days were filled with dark clouds, heavy with rain. It's cold and windy, and I wish I'd brought a jacket. I would lie if I said I wasn't nervous.
After Kevin let us into the prosectorium, we look at the harvested specimens once more. He says that it's up to us to be leaders and determine how we want to go about opening up our cadavers, to see if there's anything we can find that would be worth harvesting and saving. We wet down the specimens with embalming fluid and put them away.
We push Mike's cadaver aside for the meantime. We are to work on the middle cadaver (the male cancer patient with the chemo portal) and the newer cadaver (female cancer patient, obese). We split up into two groups of 5, pick a cadaver, and get to work. Kevin read us the death certificate of the female cadaver, and even though I saw her the day she arrived at Miramar, I didn't know all the details as I do today. She died in June of 2008 at the age of 60. We received her on November 4, 2008, so she's relatively fresh. She died of malignant lymphoma. We all wondered if we would see signs of cancer in her lymph nodes. We won't know until we open her up.
Kevin shows us how to score the skin before making our initial deep cuts. He shows us how to scrape the adipose from the dermis, leaving behind the honeycomb shaped structures of the dermal papillae. My group mates are Susan, Andrea (different from my Bio160 lab partner), Cynthia, and I think the last one is Natalie. Her name escapes me. Cynthia has taken the Bio232 class before and has worked on the face of our cadaver, prepping her for the head and neck seminar Kevin hosted over the winter break.
I like to say I was mentally prepared for the unveiling of her face. But it was already cut up and I wasn't expecting to see her right away, but it is what it is. You sink or swim. I was thinking we'd see her face towards the end of the semester, but I digress.
She looked like she was in pain, as if the cancer that ravaged her body decided that she would have no peace even at the very end. Her face was frozen in a painful grimace, her eyes shut, and a brownish liquid coming out of one corner, as if they were tears stained with the ugliness of death. Her lips were cut and split, and her facial skin was cut in sections so that it could be reflected from the body to show the underlying structures. I instinctively take my gloved hand and wipe away the tear-like secretion, then realize that she no longer feels any pain. She feels no sadness, she feels nothing. She has moved on.
We start to work on her torso, taking the time to reflect the epidermis and dermis, removing the adipose tissue from the underlying fascia. We chit chat with each other to ease the tension, to get to know each other, and to make this gruesome task more bearable. There is so much adipose along her sternal body alone that it takes us the better part of two hours to clear a section three inches across and seven inches down. We scrape away fat with scalpel blades and a metal scraper. It is a tiring and tedious task, and at one point Susan asked if we could use a spoon to remove the fat. Andrea and Tammy are working on her lower right leg, reflecting the skin along the anterior tibia, distal to the patella.
I ask Kevin what we should do with her breasts. She has substantial breasts, more than what usually makes it into the Miramar College prosectorium. The last female cadaver we had was a tiny, petite little thing, and she was relatively flat. Kevin comes to my group and we discuss what we can do with her breasts. I suggest skinning one of them to show what the breast looks like underneath the epidermis and dermis, and he agrees. He amends my suggestion by saying we cut around the areola and leave it intact. With the other one we agree to make a midsaggital cut through the areola and nipple, so that the breast tissue looks like what you'd see in a textbook illustration. We talk about her feminine parts as if they were objects, and not as if they were anything human at one point. I wonder if this means that I'm getting better at objectifying the tasks put forth, and learning how to separate my personal beliefs from my clinical side in a manner much deeper than I've ever had to before; or does it mean that I'm learning to be callous and uncaring?
Towards the end of our time, we have removed about 3/4 of a cup's worth of adipose tissue. I make a comment that it looks like ghee. Kevin asked, "Well, what is butter made of?" We all answer in unison, "Fat."
Somebody asked what we were having for lunch. I say anything without butter.
We clean up after our time is over, and we all head out of the prosectorium. I say bye to my classmates, and we walk out with Kevin. The first thing I do outside is look at the mountains in the distance, and inhale a large breath of cold, winter air.
I don't know what to think. I'm feeling lightheaded and overwhelmed. Jerry takes me straight to Kaiser Permanente so I can get my labs drawn, and from there he takes me to lunch. By the time I took a bite out of something it was 3:15PM. My last meal was the night before, at 10PM, seventeen hours prior. I instantly feel better, but I can't get my mind off of my cadaver.
She died young. She looked as if she were still in pain, and I couldn't help but feel that her grimace in death was also in anticipation of she guessed might be done to her body post mortem. She knew that she was donating her body to science, and I know that I should sleep in peace knowing that I'm not defiling her in any manner, and that she is being treated with reverence and respect. She was one of us, she is us, she is who we could be, and yet she is so much more than the sum of her body parts and structures. She is benevolent, she is generous, and she has given every student who steps into that room a gift that so very few are willing to give.
Great teacher, I give you the name of Ruth.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Ready check
Original entry date: February 3, 2009
Today we met in Kevin's office once again. This time it was a rendezvous point before we found an empty room in which to meet in and discuss the readings, as well as watch a video. After this meeting we were to head on up to the prosectorium and familiarize ourselves with our surroundings and the cadavers.
Discussing the readings was interesting. The majority of us seemed to agree on various topics such as whether we were better off learning about anatomy via use of cadavers, whether we would donate our bodies to science post mortem if we were too old to be considered for organ donation, etc. Kevin asked us thought provoking questions such as why we feel there are people who are uncomfortable with the idea of cadaver dissection, why some people look at it as desecration of a corpse, etc.
Personally I think it's mostly a Western thing, as in most Eastern cultures, the culture doesn't shy away from the subject of death. The Western idea of sending our dead to a funeral parlor and prettying up the dead to look suitable for an open casket wake, after which follows the ceremony of burying them underground in a fancy casket is largely unheard of in the Eastern cultures. Outside of the Western world, families of the dead bathe them after death, anoint them with fragrant oils, dress them, and hold a wake inside the home for extended family and villagers to view. After the viewing, the dead are either buried or cremated, usually on a funeral pyre, and then the remaining bones are pounded into dust along with the cremains, and then scattered among the fields.
In many cultures, it is the family of the deceased that is responsible for tending to all the above arduous tasks. It seems prevalent in our Western culture that the dead are a taboo subject, that we outsource what Eastern civilizations have done for several millenia, the caring of the dead, to others who have the emotional capacity and fortitude to touch the remnants of what was once alive.
As a result, cadavers to us are part of that unspoken taboo, that IN YOUR FACE reminder that all of us will someday die, and that our remains are to be handled by strangers for proper disposal. Dissection does not mean proper disposal, and I think that's one reason as to why it's so forbidden, why to some people the subject is beyond reproach.
After the discussion we watched Kevin's movie of the human brain extraction, the same video he showed my Bio160 class last semester, so it was a nice way to break out old memories (I am a fan of bad puns). Following the video, we headed upstairs to the prosectorium to introduce (or in my case, reintroduce) ourselves to the cadavers.
Mike was the first cadaver we looked at. He's been there the longest, is the most handled and dissected cadaver, and looked exactly the same as I'd last seen him. Kevin said that he was desiccating, however, and it would be up to us to re-wet the cadavers when we were done with our days' work. We passed around his heart and lungs, looked inside his abdominopelvic and thoracic cavities, and we played the "Name this structure!" game as Kevin pointed to something and asked us to provide the proper nomenclature. I had a good amount of them memorized, and Susan kept smiling at me, as she did during Monday night's Kinesiology class. She said she's amazed that I retained so much information and she asked if I'd mind working with her this semester. I'd love to, I think she's a fantastic gal.
Kevin taught me well. What can I say? He laid out the anatomical terminology and physiology in an orderly fashion, and Jerry, Andrea, and I (sometimes with Tyler) sat at Starbucks numerous times outside of class hammering away at the information, dissecting it all on paper, cataloging it into our brains. We studied our asses off, and as a result Andrea scored the highest A in the class, and I was in 3rd place right behind her. I know my anatomy, and as Susan said, I should be proud.
We looked at the second cadaver. He's not as fully dissected as Mike was, and we were able to get a good glimpse of his face. His nose was pushed to one side, and flattened, probably during the embalming process. He had a device implanted right under the subcutaneous layer of skin in between the L axillary and L hypochondriac region which turned out to be used for chemotherapy injections. The man died of cancer that metastasized, but we didn't look up the death certificate to find out the specific type. His eyes were half open, and he had a pained expression on his face, with his mouth halfway opened, as if to silently convey to us in death that dying sucks, and you too will grimace as I am when it happens to you.
I am not familiar enough with him to name him yet, but I'm sure that will change as we work on him further.
The cadaver that was delivered to us shortly after Thanksgiving, the one of the larger woman, she lay untouched by us that day. We will look at her this coming Tuesday, and Kevin did say that he would need a lot of us to work on her just cleaning up fat and separating fascia from underlying structures.
We wet down the second cadaver and cleaned up the room. We hung up our lab coats and said goodbye for the day, with cheerful promises to see each other on Tuesday.
I had just finished reading a book called Body of Work by Dr. Christine Montross, which I found to be more along the lines of what we're doing as compared to the book Stiff, by Mary Roach. Stiff covered more ways in wich donor cadavers are used, whereas Body of Work was solely about the cadaver that was being dissected by the author and her lab partners in their first year of medical school. It's their journey of discovery with their cadaver, which they aptly named Eve (due to a lack of a belly button, which they said equals lack of umbilicus, umbilicus to placenta... which leads to what? God created Eve, Eve was not born to man nor woman). It was a touching book, one that mirrored many of the thoughts I harbor over what I am about to do, what I am about to experience in this class.
Many conflicts within my own code of ethics, my morality, my own beliefs of what becomes of our mortal coil once we shed our earthly bounds, they were addressed in this book. Maybe not by answers, but the fact that the author felt similarly as I did, even if she couldn't resolve her own personal conflicts, I find a comforting justification that what I am doing is for the right reasons.
I need to get a copy of that book to Kevin and hopefully he'll find time to read it. What few fears I had left, what little trepidation remained upon my signing up for this class, that book erased them, and now I look forward to my upcoming experiences with heart, eyes, mind, and arms wide open.
I am ready to learn. This is transcendence.
Today we met in Kevin's office once again. This time it was a rendezvous point before we found an empty room in which to meet in and discuss the readings, as well as watch a video. After this meeting we were to head on up to the prosectorium and familiarize ourselves with our surroundings and the cadavers.
Discussing the readings was interesting. The majority of us seemed to agree on various topics such as whether we were better off learning about anatomy via use of cadavers, whether we would donate our bodies to science post mortem if we were too old to be considered for organ donation, etc. Kevin asked us thought provoking questions such as why we feel there are people who are uncomfortable with the idea of cadaver dissection, why some people look at it as desecration of a corpse, etc.
Personally I think it's mostly a Western thing, as in most Eastern cultures, the culture doesn't shy away from the subject of death. The Western idea of sending our dead to a funeral parlor and prettying up the dead to look suitable for an open casket wake, after which follows the ceremony of burying them underground in a fancy casket is largely unheard of in the Eastern cultures. Outside of the Western world, families of the dead bathe them after death, anoint them with fragrant oils, dress them, and hold a wake inside the home for extended family and villagers to view. After the viewing, the dead are either buried or cremated, usually on a funeral pyre, and then the remaining bones are pounded into dust along with the cremains, and then scattered among the fields.
In many cultures, it is the family of the deceased that is responsible for tending to all the above arduous tasks. It seems prevalent in our Western culture that the dead are a taboo subject, that we outsource what Eastern civilizations have done for several millenia, the caring of the dead, to others who have the emotional capacity and fortitude to touch the remnants of what was once alive.
As a result, cadavers to us are part of that unspoken taboo, that IN YOUR FACE reminder that all of us will someday die, and that our remains are to be handled by strangers for proper disposal. Dissection does not mean proper disposal, and I think that's one reason as to why it's so forbidden, why to some people the subject is beyond reproach.
After the discussion we watched Kevin's movie of the human brain extraction, the same video he showed my Bio160 class last semester, so it was a nice way to break out old memories (I am a fan of bad puns). Following the video, we headed upstairs to the prosectorium to introduce (or in my case, reintroduce) ourselves to the cadavers.
Mike was the first cadaver we looked at. He's been there the longest, is the most handled and dissected cadaver, and looked exactly the same as I'd last seen him. Kevin said that he was desiccating, however, and it would be up to us to re-wet the cadavers when we were done with our days' work. We passed around his heart and lungs, looked inside his abdominopelvic and thoracic cavities, and we played the "Name this structure!" game as Kevin pointed to something and asked us to provide the proper nomenclature. I had a good amount of them memorized, and Susan kept smiling at me, as she did during Monday night's Kinesiology class. She said she's amazed that I retained so much information and she asked if I'd mind working with her this semester. I'd love to, I think she's a fantastic gal.
Kevin taught me well. What can I say? He laid out the anatomical terminology and physiology in an orderly fashion, and Jerry, Andrea, and I (sometimes with Tyler) sat at Starbucks numerous times outside of class hammering away at the information, dissecting it all on paper, cataloging it into our brains. We studied our asses off, and as a result Andrea scored the highest A in the class, and I was in 3rd place right behind her. I know my anatomy, and as Susan said, I should be proud.
We looked at the second cadaver. He's not as fully dissected as Mike was, and we were able to get a good glimpse of his face. His nose was pushed to one side, and flattened, probably during the embalming process. He had a device implanted right under the subcutaneous layer of skin in between the L axillary and L hypochondriac region which turned out to be used for chemotherapy injections. The man died of cancer that metastasized, but we didn't look up the death certificate to find out the specific type. His eyes were half open, and he had a pained expression on his face, with his mouth halfway opened, as if to silently convey to us in death that dying sucks, and you too will grimace as I am when it happens to you.
I am not familiar enough with him to name him yet, but I'm sure that will change as we work on him further.
The cadaver that was delivered to us shortly after Thanksgiving, the one of the larger woman, she lay untouched by us that day. We will look at her this coming Tuesday, and Kevin did say that he would need a lot of us to work on her just cleaning up fat and separating fascia from underlying structures.
We wet down the second cadaver and cleaned up the room. We hung up our lab coats and said goodbye for the day, with cheerful promises to see each other on Tuesday.
I had just finished reading a book called Body of Work by Dr. Christine Montross, which I found to be more along the lines of what we're doing as compared to the book Stiff, by Mary Roach. Stiff covered more ways in wich donor cadavers are used, whereas Body of Work was solely about the cadaver that was being dissected by the author and her lab partners in their first year of medical school. It's their journey of discovery with their cadaver, which they aptly named Eve (due to a lack of a belly button, which they said equals lack of umbilicus, umbilicus to placenta... which leads to what? God created Eve, Eve was not born to man nor woman). It was a touching book, one that mirrored many of the thoughts I harbor over what I am about to do, what I am about to experience in this class.
Many conflicts within my own code of ethics, my morality, my own beliefs of what becomes of our mortal coil once we shed our earthly bounds, they were addressed in this book. Maybe not by answers, but the fact that the author felt similarly as I did, even if she couldn't resolve her own personal conflicts, I find a comforting justification that what I am doing is for the right reasons.
I need to get a copy of that book to Kevin and hopefully he'll find time to read it. What few fears I had left, what little trepidation remained upon my signing up for this class, that book erased them, and now I look forward to my upcoming experiences with heart, eyes, mind, and arms wide open.
I am ready to learn. This is transcendence.
There's a new girl in town
Original entry: November 4, 2008
Today we were given the rare opportunity to watch a cadaver exchange and delivery from UCSD's willed body program.
Kevin warned us that at some point around 9:30AM, the cadaver of the petite elder woman in the prosectorium was going to be returned to UCSD (minus her pluck) and a new cadaver was going to be exchanged in her place. Our class would be the first to see the new cadaver.
Upon arrival of the cadaver, Kevin called out to the bigger guys in class to help wheel the gurneys in and out of the prosectorium. Jerry and Jared were two of the guys called upon. Kevin said he wanted, "Strapping young men" to assist, and as Jerry walked out with Jared I called to him and said, "Dr. Petti said strapping young men, you don't count!" and Elizabeth yelled at me because she thought I said Jared's name. I told her to pipe down, I was teasing JERRY, not JARED. She let out a nervous laugh.
A couple of minutes later, Kevin walked through the back door with a look on his face that reeked of annoyance along the "oh shit" line, and Jerry and Jared followed with a cadaver that filled the body bag. He invited us all into the prosectorium and the first thing he said was, "She's larger than I thought, and she's also the youngest we've had. She's in her 60s and died of cancer." He's skimming the computerized death certificate. He says to us all, "Let's open up the bag and see what we've got" and at that point several people, Elizabeth included, leave the room. We uncover the plastic on her torso and Kevin says in a dismayed voice, "God, she's fat" and if you could put the sad faced emoticon of :( onto his face, that's what you would have seen. He then patted her leg and said, "But thank you for your donation, you're very generous."
What pissed me off was upon hearing Kevin's exclamation, Elizabeth and one other gal whose name I've since forgotten, both ran in and took a look, as if the cadaver were a spectacle and object of ridicule. Elizabeth pointed to her pubic region and said, "Oh my God what's that?" I know what she meant, and while I thought of it, I didn't actually say it out loud, as some things are better left unsaid. The cadaver had a large mons pubis, and it probably didn't help that there's naturally some bloat in the pubic region associated with embalming. Kevin explained (quite patiently, might I add) that obese people tend to have fat deposits on their pubic region and it's nothing out of the ordinary, that some people deposit fat in certain areas and that's just a matter of genetics. She was still grossed out, but I heard one person whisper to her to be respectful, and she shushed up.
Note: I have nothing against Elizabeth, I think she was a friendly gal and all, but I was just taken aback at the lack of respect towards the donor cadaver. If I am lucky enough to live a long life and die at a ripe old age, too old to donate my organs so that the younger and sick may live, I'd like to bequeath my body to a school that does cadaver dissections to further anatomy students' knowledge (like the program at Miramar) of the wonders that we know as the human body. God forbid somebody laugh at me when I'm pushing 90 and laying cold, stiff, and preserved in a body bag on a table because my tits are sagging. But then again, I'll be dead and I won't care.
Anyway, Kevin went on to discuss how his next Bio232 class was going to have a lot of work cut out for them as far as cleaning her up, getting rid of her adipose tissue so that we could access the musculature and organs to demonstrate to the Bio230 anatomy classes. Jerry and I looked at each other, because that means US.
To be honest I'm not looking forward to being elbow deep in adipose tissue. I have enough fat tissue issues of my own since I gained weight after I quit smoking. I am still not comfortable in my own skin with this extra weight, and often times I find myself off balance and not feeling as if I'm moving quite right. But the real issue is, no matter how well preserved, the smell of adipose and fatty tissue is just revolting, and the truth of it all is that no matter how often you wash up, the smell of the fat tends to stick with you.
I see myself bathing in fresh lemon juice every Tuesday for all of Spring semester 2009. And I don't care who calls me a weenie for doing so, but I *will* wear a mask and do the weenie Vicks VapoRub under the nose trick while I am working on cleaning up the adipose. I will revel in my nerdiness and call myself Queen Weenie, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
Double gloving, here I come.
Today we were given the rare opportunity to watch a cadaver exchange and delivery from UCSD's willed body program.
Kevin warned us that at some point around 9:30AM, the cadaver of the petite elder woman in the prosectorium was going to be returned to UCSD (minus her pluck) and a new cadaver was going to be exchanged in her place. Our class would be the first to see the new cadaver.
Upon arrival of the cadaver, Kevin called out to the bigger guys in class to help wheel the gurneys in and out of the prosectorium. Jerry and Jared were two of the guys called upon. Kevin said he wanted, "Strapping young men" to assist, and as Jerry walked out with Jared I called to him and said, "Dr. Petti said strapping young men, you don't count!" and Elizabeth yelled at me because she thought I said Jared's name. I told her to pipe down, I was teasing JERRY, not JARED. She let out a nervous laugh.
A couple of minutes later, Kevin walked through the back door with a look on his face that reeked of annoyance along the "oh shit" line, and Jerry and Jared followed with a cadaver that filled the body bag. He invited us all into the prosectorium and the first thing he said was, "She's larger than I thought, and she's also the youngest we've had. She's in her 60s and died of cancer." He's skimming the computerized death certificate. He says to us all, "Let's open up the bag and see what we've got" and at that point several people, Elizabeth included, leave the room. We uncover the plastic on her torso and Kevin says in a dismayed voice, "God, she's fat" and if you could put the sad faced emoticon of :( onto his face, that's what you would have seen. He then patted her leg and said, "But thank you for your donation, you're very generous."
What pissed me off was upon hearing Kevin's exclamation, Elizabeth and one other gal whose name I've since forgotten, both ran in and took a look, as if the cadaver were a spectacle and object of ridicule. Elizabeth pointed to her pubic region and said, "Oh my God what's that?" I know what she meant, and while I thought of it, I didn't actually say it out loud, as some things are better left unsaid. The cadaver had a large mons pubis, and it probably didn't help that there's naturally some bloat in the pubic region associated with embalming. Kevin explained (quite patiently, might I add) that obese people tend to have fat deposits on their pubic region and it's nothing out of the ordinary, that some people deposit fat in certain areas and that's just a matter of genetics. She was still grossed out, but I heard one person whisper to her to be respectful, and she shushed up.
Note: I have nothing against Elizabeth, I think she was a friendly gal and all, but I was just taken aback at the lack of respect towards the donor cadaver. If I am lucky enough to live a long life and die at a ripe old age, too old to donate my organs so that the younger and sick may live, I'd like to bequeath my body to a school that does cadaver dissections to further anatomy students' knowledge (like the program at Miramar) of the wonders that we know as the human body. God forbid somebody laugh at me when I'm pushing 90 and laying cold, stiff, and preserved in a body bag on a table because my tits are sagging. But then again, I'll be dead and I won't care.
Anyway, Kevin went on to discuss how his next Bio232 class was going to have a lot of work cut out for them as far as cleaning her up, getting rid of her adipose tissue so that we could access the musculature and organs to demonstrate to the Bio230 anatomy classes. Jerry and I looked at each other, because that means US.
To be honest I'm not looking forward to being elbow deep in adipose tissue. I have enough fat tissue issues of my own since I gained weight after I quit smoking. I am still not comfortable in my own skin with this extra weight, and often times I find myself off balance and not feeling as if I'm moving quite right. But the real issue is, no matter how well preserved, the smell of adipose and fatty tissue is just revolting, and the truth of it all is that no matter how often you wash up, the smell of the fat tends to stick with you.
I see myself bathing in fresh lemon juice every Tuesday for all of Spring semester 2009. And I don't care who calls me a weenie for doing so, but I *will* wear a mask and do the weenie Vicks VapoRub under the nose trick while I am working on cleaning up the adipose. I will revel in my nerdiness and call myself Queen Weenie, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.
Double gloving, here I come.
Names
Original entry date: October 10, 2008
I live a haunted existence.
Between Nick's sudden death in May, and working with the cadavers now, I am reminded every day of my fragile mortality. We go through life weaving an intricate web, spinning our relationships, experiences, and memories into the delicate silk fibers, getting tangled up in some spots as we trudge along. It's a strong and sturdy web, but it can all be ruined in an instant.
I couldn't fall asleep easily last night, and whenever I'd find myself in the first fleeting seconds of slumber, an image of the cadaver's hand in mine would appear. In my dreams my eyes would trace the musculature of the arm and upward, to a disarticulated shoulder, and then further on to a face that did not belong. The face would be Nick's.
So here I am, sitting in Dr. Petti's Health & Lifestyles 101 class, halfway listening to him lecture, and at the same time allowing my mind to wander into the uncomfortable spaces its been occupying in the wee hours of the morning. I keep thinking about the cadaver arm, and the man it belonged to. The cadaver arm is the same one that we first saw in January, with Dan's class, from the man who was born in December 1919 and had a pacemaker installed.
I know not his name, simply his month and year of birth and death, and the primary cause of death. I know of his inside body workings, the shape and lay of his muscles, what the inside of his heart looks like, the delicate arc of his semilunar valves. I do not know what his face looks like, but the more I think about him, the more I wish to give him a name. I want to name him Mike.
I don't know why this name calls to me, but it seems to fit.
So lately I am haunted by Nick and Mike, for different reasons. I wonder how long until this feeling passes.
I live a haunted existence.
Between Nick's sudden death in May, and working with the cadavers now, I am reminded every day of my fragile mortality. We go through life weaving an intricate web, spinning our relationships, experiences, and memories into the delicate silk fibers, getting tangled up in some spots as we trudge along. It's a strong and sturdy web, but it can all be ruined in an instant.
I couldn't fall asleep easily last night, and whenever I'd find myself in the first fleeting seconds of slumber, an image of the cadaver's hand in mine would appear. In my dreams my eyes would trace the musculature of the arm and upward, to a disarticulated shoulder, and then further on to a face that did not belong. The face would be Nick's.
So here I am, sitting in Dr. Petti's Health & Lifestyles 101 class, halfway listening to him lecture, and at the same time allowing my mind to wander into the uncomfortable spaces its been occupying in the wee hours of the morning. I keep thinking about the cadaver arm, and the man it belonged to. The cadaver arm is the same one that we first saw in January, with Dan's class, from the man who was born in December 1919 and had a pacemaker installed.
I know not his name, simply his month and year of birth and death, and the primary cause of death. I know of his inside body workings, the shape and lay of his muscles, what the inside of his heart looks like, the delicate arc of his semilunar valves. I do not know what his face looks like, but the more I think about him, the more I wish to give him a name. I want to name him Mike.
I don't know why this name calls to me, but it seems to fit.
So lately I am haunted by Nick and Mike, for different reasons. I wonder how long until this feeling passes.
Hands
Original entry date: October 9, 2008
We looked at the cadaver again today, or at least a part of it this time. The arm and shoulder of the cadaver we looked at on Tuesday was today, disarticulated, and Dr. Petti brought it out to the front of the classroom so that we could look at the musculature of the arm, glenohumeral joint, and scapula.
The hand was only partially dissected, and the fingertips still had their skin and fingernails intact. With my gloved hand, I gingerly held it as we turned the specimen over to look at the muscles on the posterior aspect of the arm. The hand was stiff, cold, wrinkled due to preserving fluids, yet it was in every way human. I ran my thumb over one of the fingernails, even though I knew I wasn't going to get a capillary refill response. But the moment I did that, I was overcome with emotion. Dr. Petti came up to Andrea and I and asked what we thought.
I wanted to cry.
Now I'm a big girl, and I'm not emotional sort (yay for being a tomboy), but seeing the hand of this cadaver moved me. When this man was alive, those hands held those of the ones he loved, maybe they cradled a baby or two, caressed the face of his lifebonded, held flowers or kleenex for them, depending on the occasion. That hand maybe strummed a guitar, played piano, drove to endless school or sports functions for the kids, worked an entire lifetime at a job that allowed him to provide a life for himself and the ones he loved. That hand held on to somebody when they passed, and it probably held on to somebody as he passed. The hands, along with the face, are what make us human. Seeing this hand, even in death, affected me on a very deep and visceral level.
I didn't cry. I stuffed down that rebellious emotional streak and put on my professional clinical face as I curved my hand to the outside of the cadaver's hand. I told Dr. Petti and Andrea what I thought, and Dr. Petti said that yes, it is the hands and the face that make us human. His eyes lit up as he said that, as if I was the first in this semester to bring that up with him.
He then asked if we'd read the book Stiff, The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. I read it 4 years ago when it was given to me as a gift from a friend for Christmas, since I had decided to return to school to pursue nursing. As a recovering goth, I tend to get strange and morbid gifts from the loved ones, but I digress. In the book, the author describes what cadavers donated to science undergo, and she puts that human element back into the cadaver. She also points out how the doctors, students, interns, morticians, etc. who work with the cadavers don't go about it cold heartedly. The part of the book which stands out the most to me was the first part, where she was talking about heads that were cut off and placed into roasting pans for chickens because they were in the same size.
I gave away my chicken sized roasting pan the day I finished reading the book. Most people who know me know how I feel about decapitation. Something about it can turn my stomach, and if I'm not one to cry, I'm even more adamant about being one not to vomit. I think since puberty I've vomited about twice in my adult life. I can deal with evisceration, disarticulation, amputation, burns, decomposition, putrefaction, but not decapitation. It's something I have a very, very, difficult time dealing with.
I still think about the hand of that cadaver. He was a tall man in life, with long, well proportioned limbs and good muscular structure. We each held his heart, which was enlarged, as well as his left lung, his foot, and his brain. There was another wave of wonderment as I held his heart and brain... what kind of memories were stored in there and lost forever? Who was left on this earth that his heart once beat for, in a figurative sense? We did not see his face, but there was no need to. I already knew he was once a beautiful human being.
His muscular structureswere are beautiful. Years ago I would have had nightmares about dealing with cadavers in the prosectorium, as I've seen too many horror movies in which the hands come back to life and kill the living. But as I held the hand of the cadaver, that fear wasn't with me. The only feeling I had was the small sadness in knowing that I would be one of the last to maybe hold his hand, and a deep sense of gratitude for his ultimate sacrifice after death. That sacrifice was in donating his remains so that students going into the medical field could learn about the human body.
Growing up Catholic, and having accepted other theories of death from various religions, I am ready to acknowledge that there is some sort of afterlife, and that something does become of our soul after we leave our bodies.
Wherever that man's soul is, I hope he can rest well knowing what kind of an impact he's had on the students in my class. What kind of impact he left on me. Somewhere in the world beyond the living, beyond the nether, I hope that soul understands that I am deeply appreciative, almost beyond words, for allowing me to touch his body to learn more about how human bodies work. Even though we will never meet in this lifetime, I hope I was able to communicate to his physical shell that I am thankful for his sacrifice, and that's why I cradled his hand in mine.
We looked at the cadaver again today, or at least a part of it this time. The arm and shoulder of the cadaver we looked at on Tuesday was today, disarticulated, and Dr. Petti brought it out to the front of the classroom so that we could look at the musculature of the arm, glenohumeral joint, and scapula.
The hand was only partially dissected, and the fingertips still had their skin and fingernails intact. With my gloved hand, I gingerly held it as we turned the specimen over to look at the muscles on the posterior aspect of the arm. The hand was stiff, cold, wrinkled due to preserving fluids, yet it was in every way human. I ran my thumb over one of the fingernails, even though I knew I wasn't going to get a capillary refill response. But the moment I did that, I was overcome with emotion. Dr. Petti came up to Andrea and I and asked what we thought.
I wanted to cry.
Now I'm a big girl, and I'm not emotional sort (yay for being a tomboy), but seeing the hand of this cadaver moved me. When this man was alive, those hands held those of the ones he loved, maybe they cradled a baby or two, caressed the face of his lifebonded, held flowers or kleenex for them, depending on the occasion. That hand maybe strummed a guitar, played piano, drove to endless school or sports functions for the kids, worked an entire lifetime at a job that allowed him to provide a life for himself and the ones he loved. That hand held on to somebody when they passed, and it probably held on to somebody as he passed. The hands, along with the face, are what make us human. Seeing this hand, even in death, affected me on a very deep and visceral level.
I didn't cry. I stuffed down that rebellious emotional streak and put on my professional clinical face as I curved my hand to the outside of the cadaver's hand. I told Dr. Petti and Andrea what I thought, and Dr. Petti said that yes, it is the hands and the face that make us human. His eyes lit up as he said that, as if I was the first in this semester to bring that up with him.
He then asked if we'd read the book Stiff, The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. I read it 4 years ago when it was given to me as a gift from a friend for Christmas, since I had decided to return to school to pursue nursing. As a recovering goth, I tend to get strange and morbid gifts from the loved ones, but I digress. In the book, the author describes what cadavers donated to science undergo, and she puts that human element back into the cadaver. She also points out how the doctors, students, interns, morticians, etc. who work with the cadavers don't go about it cold heartedly. The part of the book which stands out the most to me was the first part, where she was talking about heads that were cut off and placed into roasting pans for chickens because they were in the same size.
I gave away my chicken sized roasting pan the day I finished reading the book. Most people who know me know how I feel about decapitation. Something about it can turn my stomach, and if I'm not one to cry, I'm even more adamant about being one not to vomit. I think since puberty I've vomited about twice in my adult life. I can deal with evisceration, disarticulation, amputation, burns, decomposition, putrefaction, but not decapitation. It's something I have a very, very, difficult time dealing with.
I still think about the hand of that cadaver. He was a tall man in life, with long, well proportioned limbs and good muscular structure. We each held his heart, which was enlarged, as well as his left lung, his foot, and his brain. There was another wave of wonderment as I held his heart and brain... what kind of memories were stored in there and lost forever? Who was left on this earth that his heart once beat for, in a figurative sense? We did not see his face, but there was no need to. I already knew he was once a beautiful human being.
His muscular structures
Growing up Catholic, and having accepted other theories of death from various religions, I am ready to acknowledge that there is some sort of afterlife, and that something does become of our soul after we leave our bodies.
Wherever that man's soul is, I hope he can rest well knowing what kind of an impact he's had on the students in my class. What kind of impact he left on me. Somewhere in the world beyond the living, beyond the nether, I hope that soul understands that I am deeply appreciative, almost beyond words, for allowing me to touch his body to learn more about how human bodies work. Even though we will never meet in this lifetime, I hope I was able to communicate to his physical shell that I am thankful for his sacrifice, and that's why I cradled his hand in mine.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Prosectorium
Original entry date: January 28, 2008
I'm in the Biology 230 class of Dr. Dan Trubovitz, at San Diego Miramar College. I enrolled in this class as part of the five prerequisite classes needed in order to fulfill the requirement for a baccalaureate program in the field of Nursing Science. In the winter of 2006 I took Chemistry 100 + lab, in the spring of 2007 I took Biology 107, in the winter of 2007 I took Biology 205 (general microbiology), and now I am in Biology 230, otherwise known as Human Anatomy. The only science I need after this for my core sciences would be Biology 235, which is generally known as Human Physiology.
Why Anatomy and Physiology are taught separately in the lower college divisions, confuses me.
Dr. Trubovitz (whom I will hereforth refer to simply as Dan) went over the introduction to anatomy. What does anatomy mean? What are cells? What are cell systems? What are tissues? What are systems? I try to keep interested in class, and I took furious notes, even though I know the subject matter and remain one of the few people in the room who can confidently answer his questions regarding the very basics of organ systems.
He announces that we are dissecting rats, and we are to point out basic structures within the rats. Find the lungs, heart, liver, stomach, intestines, spleen, kidneys, and find several types of tissues associated with the structures. Mesentery proper, greater omentum, lesser omentum. The names are strange, yet familiar, and all my prior knowledge of the subject starts to wake from a long and deep slumber.
Some of the people in there who raised their hand and said that they were in the class to fulfill their prereq for nursing (sound familiar?) got squeamish and refused to touch the rat. One of the girls said that looking at dead things and their squishy organs grossed her out. She said that she wanted to work as an ICU nurse. Good luck with that sister.
After we cleaned up from our first day dissection, Dan took us into the prosectorium to look at the cadavers. Miramar is blessed with a good program (for a state community college) that allows students access to cadavers from a joint program with UCSD. Currently there are three cadavers in the back. Dan opens the door, invites us all to don gloves, and then goes towards the body at the end of the room and begins unzipping the body bag.
Students mill around, some look mortified at the prospect of being near a dead body. Some choose not to go into the room. I am at the front and center, gloves on and ready, and he removes the wrappings from the cadaver and begins to show us the body.
The cadaver is large. In life the man must have been about 6'1". He is lean, and the color of his flesh is rendered a weird shade of yellow-brown as a result of the embalming process. He has a visible pacemaker, and he was dissected enough so that we could look at his entire thoracic and abdominopelvic cavity. Dan passed around his heart for all of us to hold; it was a large, stiff mass of muscle, with white rubbery tubes that were the aorta and vena cava. The man was born in December 1919, and died in June of 2004 of congestive heart failure.
Five minutes later we left the room. I'm so weirded out from holding a man's heart in my hands, of seeing a cadaver that up close and personal, and the smell of the formalin lingers in my nostrils and throat. I have so many questions going on in my head that I can't even really think straight right now.
All I know is that lunch is out of the question.
I'm in the Biology 230 class of Dr. Dan Trubovitz, at San Diego Miramar College. I enrolled in this class as part of the five prerequisite classes needed in order to fulfill the requirement for a baccalaureate program in the field of Nursing Science. In the winter of 2006 I took Chemistry 100 + lab, in the spring of 2007 I took Biology 107, in the winter of 2007 I took Biology 205 (general microbiology), and now I am in Biology 230, otherwise known as Human Anatomy. The only science I need after this for my core sciences would be Biology 235, which is generally known as Human Physiology.
Why Anatomy and Physiology are taught separately in the lower college divisions, confuses me.
Dr. Trubovitz (whom I will hereforth refer to simply as Dan) went over the introduction to anatomy. What does anatomy mean? What are cells? What are cell systems? What are tissues? What are systems? I try to keep interested in class, and I took furious notes, even though I know the subject matter and remain one of the few people in the room who can confidently answer his questions regarding the very basics of organ systems.
He announces that we are dissecting rats, and we are to point out basic structures within the rats. Find the lungs, heart, liver, stomach, intestines, spleen, kidneys, and find several types of tissues associated with the structures. Mesentery proper, greater omentum, lesser omentum. The names are strange, yet familiar, and all my prior knowledge of the subject starts to wake from a long and deep slumber.
Some of the people in there who raised their hand and said that they were in the class to fulfill their prereq for nursing (sound familiar?) got squeamish and refused to touch the rat. One of the girls said that looking at dead things and their squishy organs grossed her out. She said that she wanted to work as an ICU nurse. Good luck with that sister.
After we cleaned up from our first day dissection, Dan took us into the prosectorium to look at the cadavers. Miramar is blessed with a good program (for a state community college) that allows students access to cadavers from a joint program with UCSD. Currently there are three cadavers in the back. Dan opens the door, invites us all to don gloves, and then goes towards the body at the end of the room and begins unzipping the body bag.
Students mill around, some look mortified at the prospect of being near a dead body. Some choose not to go into the room. I am at the front and center, gloves on and ready, and he removes the wrappings from the cadaver and begins to show us the body.
The cadaver is large. In life the man must have been about 6'1". He is lean, and the color of his flesh is rendered a weird shade of yellow-brown as a result of the embalming process. He has a visible pacemaker, and he was dissected enough so that we could look at his entire thoracic and abdominopelvic cavity. Dan passed around his heart for all of us to hold; it was a large, stiff mass of muscle, with white rubbery tubes that were the aorta and vena cava. The man was born in December 1919, and died in June of 2004 of congestive heart failure.
Five minutes later we left the room. I'm so weirded out from holding a man's heart in my hands, of seeing a cadaver that up close and personal, and the smell of the formalin lingers in my nostrils and throat. I have so many questions going on in my head that I can't even really think straight right now.
All I know is that lunch is out of the question.
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