Consider the Cadaver
by Vahid Yazdi
Photograph by Vahid Yazdi on 35mm film
I felt a terrible angst the night before my first anatomical dissection. My mind began to recall the sterile and lifeless room wherein I had recently participated in the act of washing a deceased loved one. This dramatic scene had occurred only a few months prior to my admission to medical school and was fresh on my mind. This was somebody’s father I would be dissecting, somebody’s brother, their uncle, their grandfather. What I was about to do felt so strange.
Upon entering the anatomy lab and unzipping the bag containing the cadaver, my anxiety and unease were serendipitously replaced with a sense of respect. I felt respect for this man whose vessel laid before me, unbound from his soul. The noble donation of his physical body fit aptly with the writing on the wall of the anatomy lab - “Here is the place where death rejoices in helping life.”
As I enter the final thread of my pre-clinical years, I remember that initial feeling I had in a lab which is now so familiar. Just before I entered the lab a few weeks ago, I said to a fellow classmate, “Alright let’s get this over with,” and caught myself thinking, “What a drag.” The same act of dissection was taking place, and the cadaver was still providing an invaluable source of knowledge to young medical students. So why had my thoughts become so callous?
“Medicine is a field of service with immense responsibility.”
I believe the answer to this question is of great importance and requires a brief consideration of human nature. No one has ever existed in a state where they were not the center of their own universe. In the most literal sense, every human being who has ever lived has only seen through their own eyes. Therefore, it would seem that we have a predisposition or a “default” setting geared towards egocentrism.
But then how did Socrates choose to give his life for the truth, or how did Gandhi suffer his hunger for justice and peace? The actions’ of these figures suggest that humans possess a powerful tool which allows us to transcend our “default” selfish predilections. This distinguishing tool is our conscious freedom of awareness. Sacrificing their physical matrixes, in which they were at the center of their own universe, Gandhi and Socrates utilized their consciousness to focus on a collective, intangible, and less outwardly alluring reality. Leavened by the inwardly dwelling concepts of hope, love, faith, justice, respect, and empathy, they chose to direct their awareness and conscious efforts into this uniquely human reality. They recognized that they had a choice - a freedom - and chose the ideal over the immediate.
The practice of medicine is largely based on this same, lofty idealism. It is a field of service with immense responsibility. Armed with this concomitant responsibility, medicine is constantly testing our freedom of awareness - often in extreme manners. Whether it’s nearing the 14th hour of an 18-hour shift or being woken up to a 3am page, the mind will naturally waver and yearn to return to its “default” state as the center of its universe. As a result, we may begin to treat the disease but pass over the human - remembering the task while surrendering the reason. This stands as proof that the demanding nature of medicine can insidiously erode even our recognition of this freedom of awareness. And that is perhaps the most inauspicious result of all - we begin making daily choices (of where to put our thoughts) without our conscious knowledge that a choice is being made.
This is why I have chosen to consider the cadaver. For a medical student, the cadaver is our first patient and our first meaningful challenge. Importantly, it brings to question our awareness when dealing with patients; providing a remembrance to the fact that when we are working with the cadaver, a conscious choice is being made within ourselves. We can use our consciousness to focus on this fundamentally spiritual act of dissection or we can consider the “drag” of the work that dissecting entails.
The purpose of this piece is to serve as a reminder, perhaps to myself more than anyone else, of this freedom. A freedom which can be forgotten in the skirmishes of daily life and which takes on a unique responsibility in the medical field.
Vahid Yazdi is a second-year medical student at the UTCOMLS.
