The memory remains

I was watching this documentary the other day on Dutch television in a series made by 'Ewout Genemans' who was investigating more about dead bodies and how the process of decay actually goes.

Not a super happy topic to watch ofcourse with a bag of chips included, but when you are looking at the topic from a more scientific point of view, this is more of a 'what does nature do' kind of of way. No emotions involved as yet, but just...what happens in certain stages.

Pixabay


The original topic of the documentary is more about what happens when you donate the body to science. What are some of the options of what might be done with it. One part was to get more insights of what happens to a body when it is buried and what it does to the vegetation around it. This is something the authoraties are interested in when you look at it from a perspective of when you are looking for a body of a missing person.

Another topic that was touched in there was about what happens when a donated body is used for educational purposes. That is something I have worked with during my own education and the memories of that experience are something that you don't forget that fast.

Now when you work in surgery like I do in the direction where the cases are a bit more complicated and also a lot of emergency situation come in, it also means that death passes by every now and then unfortunately. When you know how a human body looks from the inside, and you see that something is significantly damaged (from disease or trauma), it is way easier to accept that something is not fixable anymore.

That being said....It is always a lot easier to think in this kind of way when you don't have any emotional attachment to your patient. You don't know their family, you don't know what their house looks like, you don't know how they used to crack jokes. Because those are the aspects that make it very mcu different when those come in. Then your patient is a person again. A person with feelings and a story.

When thinking back about my training how we learned how to dissect tissue from the bodies that were 'given' to us by someone who wanted to donate their body to science, it was only more than humbling to realise that someone wanted their body as training material for us. Training so we could become better professionals helping others.

I have tons of respect for people making those choices because it also has consequences for how a memorial service can be run. So it was a more than logical thing that we all worked on our 'training material' with the uttermost respect. It was extremely usefull for all of our 'tissue handling' skills and we all learned so much more than just that. Most of us worked in silence, trying to use all the time in the best kind of way to get the most learning return out of it.

After the lesson was done and we walked out, we all took a look back at our room full of former family members that had given their body so that we could learn. I think some of us even took a bow or made a salute to say their silent thanks.

The memory of that still remains.