First Anatomy Lab

As I walked into the anatomy lab, the smell of formaldehyde immediately turned my stomach. Thirty corpses, each laying on a cold metal gurney, were lined up in front of me. Our professors had counseled us that the first day would be an unusual experience, but I couldn’t shake the idea that this looked like a bad horror movie. As I approached my cadaver, I realized that this person – likely someone’s sweet little grandmother – had donated her body to me. She would be my anatomy teacher for the next semester, and would likely become permanently lodged in my memory. This no longer looked like horror, but rather like the greatest gift one could ever give a med student. Of course, I should thank my parents for the second greatest gift you could give, my new stethoscope (thanks mom!).

My four lab mates and I had read and re-read the instructions in preparation for today. Our first step was to clean and prepare the body. Everyone was putting on their stoic face, and doing the assigned steps with remarkable efficiency, but our bright red faces revealed how truly freaked out we all were. I noticed that I kept touching her arm, almost trying to comfort her through the transition from corpse – deceased person – to cadaver – tool of scientific learning. I kept wondering who she was before she died. Was she happy and fulfilled, or had she lived a hard life? Did she die peacefully one night, or had she succumbed to her illness after a long struggle? Her surgical scars pointed to the possibility of breast cancer, but we won’t find out her cause of death until the end of the semester.

Once the dissection commenced, I became wrapped up in the anatomy of the human body, and wondered less often about her life and death. She had donated her body to me in order for me to learn about and appreciate the human body, so I got right to work. Our group worked remarkably well, everyone sharing “scalpel time” and “book time”. One good thing about being surrounded by other intense over-achieving type A personalities is that communication and cooperation occur very efficiently and with few words.

The human body is beautiful. A drawing does not do justice to the perfect symmetry of the trapezius muscle, and the gleaming tendons intricately interwoven through the back. On a many occasions, a member of the group would just blurt out “whoa, that’s so cool”, and we would all gather around to marvel at a certain structure. There was also plenty of “Are we too shallow, or too deep? I think we cut through the muscle we’re supposed to be looking at…”, but overall everyone proved to have a pretty good hand at dissection.

As we zipped up the body bag on our first day’s dissection, I was again hit with the gift that had been provided us. At one point during the dissection, a member of our group pointed out that if we weren’t med students we would go to jail for cutting up a corpse. Even in our first week, we have been given such a privileged place in society. To everyone who plans on donating their body to science…thank you. To everyone who didn’t, that’s cool. Just remember not to get too angry at that jerk who cut you off in traffic; he may be the greatest learning tool a med student could have.

Remember that this post is a fictionalized account. Details about the "patient" were changed and/or just made up. I can do that, you know.