I approached the door to the lab, took a deep breath, and donned one of the white coats hanging on the rack. I stepped inside, feeling the chill of the air through my scrubs and coat. I started walking over to our table. "Glasses, oh, I forgot glasses," I muttered. I proceeded back to the table, where I exhaled shakily and gave my lab group a nervous glance. I mustered as much toughness as I could.
On the table before us was a large blue bag, and inside of it was our first cadaver.
I listened to our professor intently, but was ever conscious of the blue bag on the table in front of me. I couldn't stop looking around. I was morbidly scared but curious. I had only seen a body once before, and I had a feeling that this would not be similar. "They're not there anymore," I consoled myself. "This is an immense gift to science." I silently thanked the cadaver in my head for their incredible gift. It must take a very selfless person to donate their body to science, I thought. It would not be an easy decision, if you think about it.
Time passed, instructions were given, and then I was in this singular moment before me:
It was time.
My lab group started unzipping the bag.
I took a step back, unsure. And there he - she? was, face down, pale as paper. The cadaver had been old. Maybe it shouldn't, but it made me feel a little better. I think I would have been a lot more sad if it had been young. This way, at least I hope it had lived a full life. A good one.
There was still a bandage on its back. There was a large bruise on the shoulder and a pressure wound on the lower back. I couldn't suppress the morbid need to look around the room at the other cadavers around me. Some were a lot larger. Others were small, and almost looked caved in, withered. They were all face down. The cadaver next to me had a tattoo on his arm. Dr. Fabrizio's cadaver still had her toenails painted pink.
I stared at our cadaver and couldn't take my eyes away. I wasn't feeling as though I would throw up or pass out. No.
Instead, I started to tear up. I felt overcome with emotion.
"You okay?" my lab partners Jason, Robert and Victor asked with raised eyebrows.
I nodded, still teary-eyed, fighting the urge to wipe the moisture pooling in my eyes. The pungent smell of formaldehyde was a good reminder to not do that. But still I started to lift a hand. "Don't touch your face," Jason reminded me. I put my hands down.
"What do you want to name him?" Robert asked me. I shook my head. "I don't know," I replied. "Think about it," he said kindly.
"Well, we're not certain it's a him. It's just... so amazing. It's beautiful. It's such a gift," I say, sniffling. I can't get over it. I stare at the table, I am too hesitant to touch the cadaver yet, I can only watch. I am still scared, full of trepidation. What was the cadaver's story? Why did it choose to donate its body to science?
"We need to name him," Victor said later as Dr. Nelson passed by. "Her," she corrected Victor, as she stopped at our table. We all looked at the cadaver. "It's a her," she said, gesturing her eyes - and we looked at each other kind of embarrassed, as we realized all of the cadavers had shaved heads - not just the males.
"I like the name Julia," Robert said. "I do too." I agreed. And so, with that, we named our cadaver Ms. Julia. The guys started marking with sharpie the areas on the cadaver to cut, taking scapels and beginning. I waited a few minutes still and then, still trying to get over how overwhelmingly amazing, macabre, upsetting, emotional and overall strange this whole situation was, I swallowed and took hold of a scapel.
"Now's as good a time as ever," I told Robert and Victor, as I began to slice.
Later at lunch, I walked upstairs, and my blood sugar was 35 - I could hardly feel it. I had been so hyped up from cadaver lab that I hadn't noticed my low or any of the symptoms, although I started to feel them then, the all-too familiar wave of numbness of my mind and shakiness setting in. I took a deep breath, bracing myself for the next few minutes of being out of control of my body.
But it had been an experience, and an amazing one, at that, for the first time in cadaver lab. I was imbued with so much new respect for the human body and for the gift that our cadaver was, as strange a thing as it was to confront dissecting an actual human being.
PT school has been an adventure so far, and there are many more to come.
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