Agent 0086

We start gowning up outside the laboratory, those not knowing that they had to purchase an additional dissection gown to wear on top of our lab coats call out frantically to people walking around with spares, looking to buy one. Nobody wanting to miss out on our first dissection and surgical skills class, the air thick with anticipation.

We move swiftly towards the back of the laboratory, past the usual gurneys where cadavers lie supine, draped with sheets, as always, the heavy smell of formaldehyde assaulting our senses. The lab technicians have boarded up the area, the lecturer already delivering his 5 minute talk on class objectives, I squeeze between two boards and lean against an empty gurney. Next comes the talk from the occupational health and safety officer, ‘I have spent a long time sectioning 45 limbs, I will not do another one, these limbs have been in and out of the refrigerator and if you fail to spray down your specimen after your dissection and mould starts forming, that is your problem, you will not get another limb’

‘Group 9, front gurney!’ We file down obediently, the lower left limb (pelvis to toe) of a rather large older female lay wrapped in plastic, number 0086, awaiting her butchers. I stare at her toenails, chipped and stained dark brown, partly from age, partly from the fixing process. This limb used to be attached to a living person, I am slightly unnerved. Strange that I feel this way, because we have spent a good 8 months looking and poking around in the chest and abdominal cavities of severed torsos, ran our fingers in between vasculature and nerves of dissected limbs, during those instances, there was always an odd sense of detachment from the gruesomeness of it all, curiosity replacing any sort of emotional reaction.

We lay out our tools, 4 scalpels between 5. Blades 20 and 4. That will do. First cut, surprisingly easy with the sharp scalpel edge melting into the first layer of fascia, motion controlled and deliberate, stopping ourselves from cutting beyond the subcutaneous fat, into muscle. After the requisite long incision from top to inner ankle, performed in parts by all 5 of us, we start peeling back the skin, slowly sectioning it off from the 2 inch thick layer of yellow fat, one hand pulling the dissected fascial sheet, one hand slicing between fascia and subcutaneous fat. A long and tedious process, but it does not feel like the hour that it takes to do it. After finally reflecting the skin, I step back and look at 0086, skin flaps spread out flat on either side, exposing the thick yellow globular fat layer beneath

“That’s enough for the day”, says the lecturer.

We work to spray the requisite chemicals on 0086 and a student from a neighbouring gurney comes over to look at our work, “you butchers!”, he pipes. Indeed.

We collect as much fat and skin bits that have come off 0086 and place it in a separate bag to be placed together with the limb. Every single piece to be collected and kept, until it is time for cremation, where 0086 will be put back together with the rest of her sectioned body parts and dissected bits, whole.

“So what’s for lunch?” I ask a group mate, having lost all my appetite but feeling the gastric juices working its corrosive magic since skipping breakfast.

He insists we order braised pork belly.
Photo from Chubby Hubby

I have none of it.

August 24, 2009. Med School. 2 comments.

Dr Rowan Gillies

We attended the 2009 Errol Solomon Meyers Memorial Lecture this evening, delivered by Dr. Rowan Gillies. I went expecting to walk away with more bright eyed wonder and heady idealism, and perhaps selfishly hoped to draw some strength and inspiration from Dr. Gillies for the last 8 painful weeks of first year medicine. I, however, came out a little more grounded and had some of my romantic notions about humanitarian aid quelled.

What I took away from the lecture

1. Politics is part and parcel of life. Embrace it, take a side and lobby your cause with the appropriate groups, or join MSF, remain neutral to serve the people caught in the crossfire and on either side and hope for the best. Your political opinion should not matter.
2. You will have multiple bouts of diarrhoea and malaria.
3. You will not make alot of money.
4. You will, at some point, end up being used as a political tool.
5. Your aid will provide a false sense of political protection and security to those you help.

His closing statement, paraphrased.

I asked a colleague why we were not getting any thanks for the work we were doing and he said to me, “Should you be expecting thanks for doing the right thing?”

August 21, 2009. Med School. Leave a comment.