Last month I dressed in scrubs, put a wad of blue neoprene gloves in my pockets, tied my hair up, took a deep breath of fresh air, and opened the doors to Chicago Medical School's gross anatomy lab. Though this meaning of gross has become obsolete in the English language, in the medical world it still functions as a noun for the main body, bulk, or mass (dictionary.com). Right now, in my world, it refers to the human body from skull to little toe. Starting the second week of school my top priority in studying, says the gross anatomy director, is to spend time with my cadaver and know him inside and out. Welcome to medicine.
My cadaver?! As hinted before when I observed suspicious cardboard boxes unloaded from delivery trucks, our foundation of knowledge about the human body is graciously taught by deceased men and women who donated their bodies to science. Without their generosity, physicians would not really understand what the body looks like. "The leg bone's connected to the hip bone," should be sung more like, "The rectus capitis posterior major's connected to the occipital bone..."
So I open the door into the gross anatomy lab and am hit first by the stench of formaldehyde. It's a unique and permeating smell of chemical preservatives mixed with a hint of oiliness. That smell lingers; I plan to dump the scrubs, shoes, and socks I use for lab at the end of the year. I'm assigned to work on Elmur over in tank #31. All we know about him is his first name, age, and that he's a veteran. With five other students, we open the stainless steel covering on the tank; cut a line lengthwise through the bag; drain the residual embalming fluids out of the bag; and cover his face, hands, and feet with Vaseline to keep them moist until we study those parts later. It takes all six of us to flip the man over, prone.
We stand around the tank and just stare at Elmur's back. We're supposed to cut that? Where do we start? What if we mess up? One long line from neck to butt and several horizontal lines across the shoulders, waist, and hips creates a series of flaps that we peel back. I'll spare you the details. I had no idea what preserved skin would feel like and was semi shocked by its coldness. Was I expecting a warm body? I was surprised by its rigidity and by the ease at which a scalpel blade slides through the tissue. I defy my own expectations by picking up a scalpel in my double-gloved hands and steadily, deliberately, confidently get to work on the shoulder region.
What pictures and lectures don't convey is the reality of handling a body. It has sounds and smells. It is not idealized like the bodies in diagrams and drawings. The smell and the oil. Oh, the oil of fat. It can be analogized to food but I won't go there. Now I'm starting to see bodies as more than people. They're fleshy organisms not unlike any other animal.
Once we started to separate skin from underlying fat did I get revved up. Elmer no longer was a person but a specimen to be analyzed. He wanted it to be that way. This is what I came to school to study.
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| CMS anatomy lab |
So I open the door into the gross anatomy lab and am hit first by the stench of formaldehyde. It's a unique and permeating smell of chemical preservatives mixed with a hint of oiliness. That smell lingers; I plan to dump the scrubs, shoes, and socks I use for lab at the end of the year. I'm assigned to work on Elmur over in tank #31. All we know about him is his first name, age, and that he's a veteran. With five other students, we open the stainless steel covering on the tank; cut a line lengthwise through the bag; drain the residual embalming fluids out of the bag; and cover his face, hands, and feet with Vaseline to keep them moist until we study those parts later. It takes all six of us to flip the man over, prone.
We stand around the tank and just stare at Elmur's back. We're supposed to cut that? Where do we start? What if we mess up? One long line from neck to butt and several horizontal lines across the shoulders, waist, and hips creates a series of flaps that we peel back. I'll spare you the details. I had no idea what preserved skin would feel like and was semi shocked by its coldness. Was I expecting a warm body? I was surprised by its rigidity and by the ease at which a scalpel blade slides through the tissue. I defy my own expectations by picking up a scalpel in my double-gloved hands and steadily, deliberately, confidently get to work on the shoulder region.
What pictures and lectures don't convey is the reality of handling a body. It has sounds and smells. It is not idealized like the bodies in diagrams and drawings. The smell and the oil. Oh, the oil of fat. It can be analogized to food but I won't go there. Now I'm starting to see bodies as more than people. They're fleshy organisms not unlike any other animal.
Once we started to separate skin from underlying fat did I get revved up. Elmer no longer was a person but a specimen to be analyzed. He wanted it to be that way. This is what I came to school to study.
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