I simultaneously felt awe, fear, excitement, humility, cowardice, courage, frailty, strength, embarrassment, curiosity, sorrow, and joy. This was only my second day of medical school, but there I was, in the basement, with a real human body in front of me, preparing with a group of four others to make the first incision of many into a being that was human but could not feel, could not move, could not see, could not scream. Lift the tank covers. Elevate the body from the tank. Unzip the body bag. Gingerly remove the towel covering the body. Moment of stunned silence. I cannot adequately describe the mental/emotional overload. There doesn't exist a word in the English language for it: every neuron was firing frantically, and every emotion was in such high gear. Everything eventually melded into an unworldly sense of... calm? that I'd never quite experienced before. Ready, set... incision. The moment that scalpel blade pierced skin, I damn near drowned in a mental storm: how do I detach myself enough to continue cutting what was once a living human being, but remain humanly connected such that I can appropriately appreciate their incredible sacrifice? Keep cutting. This incision has to be straight. Don't go too deep or else you'll ruin muscle. Just work through the subcutaneous fat. Easy, there. Careful. I'm not sure I ever resolved that struggle, honestly. Being on the receiving end of such an incomprehensibly generous gift is just... staggering... but also confusing. I've never had an experience constantly make me question my understanding of humanity and personhood. I never felt nauseous, grossed out, or faint. But then again, I've never been a particularly squeamish person, so maybe I'm the wrong person to ask about this, as I know a good many people were clobbered by the smell of the preservative. As the days went by, I continued to skin, cut, peel, break, explore. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. We learned various details about our cadaver as we went along. We found signs of surgery. We found bleeds and clots. Etc. I know most other tanks came up with names for their cadavers, but I never felt comfortable naming ours. Something about arbitrarily making up a name felt off. To this day I still think of her mentally just as "Teacher". Eight months of dissection later, it was over. A week after completion of our anatomy course, our class held a donor dedication ceremony, where we honored the sacrifice of those who donated their bodies for us to learn from. It was touching to hear my classmates speak about their experiences, and it was heartening to see the high attendance numbers -- I think we really made our anatomy faculty proud of our solidarity in showing humanity/grace. While I was extremely pressed for time to submit a massive research paper due that same day, I agreed to participate in the ceremony and put together a little speech (copied below). I didn't entirely stick to the script -- I had an unexpected and powerful wave of emotion towards the end, and my focus blurred for a moment as I struggled to recollect my thoughts and hold back tears. I managed to complete the speech, albeit with a bit of hoarseness in my voice, and after I was done speaking and the applause started, I could only describe my emotional state as that of catharsis. I felt... relieved. Released. Grateful that I had been given the opportunity to pay my respects. It wasn't that I felt... sad, per se, truth be told, I don't really know how to describe that particular emotional state either. Perhaps only those who have been through the anatomy experience will ever really understand it? I'm not sure. I now volunteer for our anatomy lab as time allows. I see it as something of a duty to help new students with my experience as much as possible (and it lets me review!), so when I can, I go in and work on prosections -- special dissections of body parts that the students use as models to study/learn from. source
