farewell, cadaver #1

Anatomy dissection was one of those things where you are so afraid of what it means, and when you are actually doing it, the blinders go on and you push it all away to do what needs to be done. And then in the end, you get a second to breathe again and you realize, you will never get an opportunity like that again in your life.

They gave us a body, so that we might learn, so that we might uncover the mysteries of the human form. This body yielded to us so much more.

We called him Bruce, as in Bruce Banner, because his musculature was so pronounced and hefty. His muscles shined pink and robust with formaldehyde like Christmas ham. He hardly smelled at all. When we arrive at his lower abdomen, he yielded us a great treasure of a massive direct hernia. We found a spleen bordering on splenomegaly, and gold teeth. I called him a pirate, a swashbuckler, an adventurer, climber of mountains, sailer of ships. He must have died in a short amount of time, because next to the emaciated, wasted bodies elsewhere in the dissecting room, his crevasses were overflowing with slippery fat, his body toned. When we got to his face, we marveled at how much he resembled Danny Devito. We were proud of our Bruce. He was good to us.

Though it may seem morbid to the outsider, it seemed only natural to derive our own narrative. Here were so many clues to where he came from and how he died. We would make up stories to try to fill in the crazy mad-libs of his body. How could we not wonder about what lay beyond, backwards into the time-space continuum? With so many secrets yielded, how could we not be curious about his story?

Some say there is a danger here, of objectifying the body, forgetting its human roots, disrespecting it by operating with a lack of gravitas, being too cavalier. In practice I found that the contrary was true: dissection only whet our appetites for the stories of our "patient," and for our future patients -- the narratives of human lives.

And in that I believe was Bruce's greatest gift to us. That despite the stress and deadlines and quizzes and tests, we never lose our sense of wonder.

Thank you, cadaver #1.