I'm almost done classes in my first semester of medical school (hooray!). I have a few exams to get through before I am able to take some time off and decompress. I sat down at my desk, as often do, grappling with what to study next. I settled for anatomy. To brush up on things I may have forgotten, I started re-watching some cadaver videos and I felt the familiar sinking feeling welling up inside of me. A profound discomfort, like an elephant sitting on my chest (and not the angina kind). I should be desensitized to this, why do I still feel this "crainte"? Why do I still find it so uncomfortable to look at? Am I the only one who has this? I paused the video and pushed aside my oatmeal to really think about this. All that came to mind was "I'm staring inside a human". And then it dawned on me how detached we are from death in society. How non-normalized it is to see death, and even more, a dead body. We have become experts in the experience of death and loss, and grieving and all the customs and feelings that come with it; that is something we know. But we never SEE death. Even at open casket funerals, the bodies are neatly dressed and wearing more make-up than a super model on a runway to look as much alive as possible (or as fake as possible). But there is still something eerie and raw about staring at a body. The terrifying serenity of just how still it is. How the chest doesn't rise and fall rhythmically and the fingers don't gently bob with each pulse from a vibrant beating heart.
I think what I hate most about anatomy is how it deconstructs you into parts, taking all the humanity out of you until you are reduced to nerves, muscles, organs. Until all your uniqueness is gone (aside from the occasional individual variation in positioning, size, and location of your components). How can people be so similar on the inside and yet so radically different on the outside? The same parts with a few alterations in the brain can change you from Mother Teresa to a school shooter. To want to save our world or destroy it. Even more terrifying, to think that these same parts are found with you and me, within people we love. That the diseases that won the battle against our donors could one day take us too. And that we all someday will look like the cadavers on that metal table. Exposed, vulnerable, and that spark that makes us us completely extinguished. I'm not sure what about peeling back the pectoralis major or staring into the left main bronchus brought about these feelings but I know one thing for sure from everything I've learned so far and that's how fragile and strong life is. How cruel and precious it is. And how often doctors and nurses and frontline healthcare workers are standing in that profoundly terrifying and humbling nebulous grey area between life and death. And hopefully with a little more training (who am I kidding, A LOT more training), I can give life a fighting chance.
I think what I hate most about anatomy is how it deconstructs you into parts, taking all the humanity out of you until you are reduced to nerves, muscles, organs. Until all your uniqueness is gone (aside from the occasional individual variation in positioning, size, and location of your components). How can people be so similar on the inside and yet so radically different on the outside? The same parts with a few alterations in the brain can change you from Mother Teresa to a school shooter. To want to save our world or destroy it. Even more terrifying, to think that these same parts are found with you and me, within people we love. That the diseases that won the battle against our donors could one day take us too. And that we all someday will look like the cadavers on that metal table. Exposed, vulnerable, and that spark that makes us us completely extinguished. I'm not sure what about peeling back the pectoralis major or staring into the left main bronchus brought about these feelings but I know one thing for sure from everything I've learned so far and that's how fragile and strong life is. How cruel and precious it is. And how often doctors and nurses and frontline healthcare workers are standing in that profoundly terrifying and humbling nebulous grey area between life and death. And hopefully with a little more training (who am I kidding, A LOT more training), I can give life a fighting chance.
