Putting the GROSS in gross anatomy.
This quarter I am taking a class that is disturbing and thoroughly unpleasant: Gross Anatomy. For those of y'all that don't know, this involves dissecting an embalmed 88 year old woman who died of septicemia due to complications of pneumonia.
Yeah.
I hate this class.
It's not just from the gag-inducing smell. Or from the fact that her body is coming apart in flaking, dried chunks since she died before last summer and has been partially dissected by physical therapy students. Or that fact that as a pharmaceutical scientist I *really* don't need to pick apart an elderly woman's mesentery and poke probes into her vena cava to be clinically competent.
It's mostly the fact that I feel sorry for her. I think when people donate their bodies to science--truly a self-less act--they don't realize that they end up on a slab, reeking of formaldehyde and phenol, being criticized by students who treat them like a piece of meat and complain how much they suck because their abdominal cavity is too small to see anything and that they wish they were assigned to that big fat guy at Table 9. It's reducing a person with a family and hobbies and memories and loves to a freakin' grade.
It's death without dignity, forced on students that really don't want to be there and really don't need to be.
Yeah.
I hate this class.
It's not just from the gag-inducing smell. Or from the fact that her body is coming apart in flaking, dried chunks since she died before last summer and has been partially dissected by physical therapy students. Or that fact that as a pharmaceutical scientist I *really* don't need to pick apart an elderly woman's mesentery and poke probes into her vena cava to be clinically competent.
It's mostly the fact that I feel sorry for her. I think when people donate their bodies to science--truly a self-less act--they don't realize that they end up on a slab, reeking of formaldehyde and phenol, being criticized by students who treat them like a piece of meat and complain how much they suck because their abdominal cavity is too small to see anything and that they wish they were assigned to that big fat guy at Table 9. It's reducing a person with a family and hobbies and memories and loves to a freakin' grade.
It's death without dignity, forced on students that really don't want to be there and really don't need to be.