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Medical students sing praises of donors
Published on 12/07/04
BY HOLLY AUER
Of The Post and Courier Staff
As the daylight illuminating the stained glass windows of St. Luke's Chapel faded, a choir's voice rose up in thanks. The people they sung to honor were not present, but in their places were friends, family, and a wellspring of new knowledge.
Medical University of South Carolina students gathered Monday afternoon to celebrate those who gave them their first chance at unraveling the mysteries of the human body — people who donated their bodies this year to the university's anatomical gift program.
About 20 donor families attended the memorial service, which featured a chorus, orchestra, interdenominational prayers and readings and personal reflections from students.
Tammy Lawler, a student in the nurse anesthetist program, read from a poem that underscored the humanity of each donor: "Let us not forget that you were someone's child, someone's parent, someone's first love."
More than 200 students — most studying to become doctors, but also those in dental, physician's assistant and nurse anesthetist programs — get to know those donors through MUSC's gross anatomy program each year. The semester-long odyssey through the human form begins with the back and snakes through the arms, abdominal and chest cavities, and legs.
Last comes the head and neck, by which time students say they feel they've come to know their cadavers as the people who once lived, breathed, worked and loved.
In homage to donors' service in both life and death, donors' families received conch shells during the ceremony, a symbol of how their loved ones live on.
Many people get a little squeamish at the idea of dissecting a human body. It's a leap for medical students, too, since most spent their undergraduate years studying petri dish cultures and molecular models.
But through the generosity of their donors, students in the more than 120-hour gross anatomy program undergo an educational transformation that they say is integral to their training as doctors.
"You can get your hands in there to look at all the different angles, and you get a much better view of the body because you're not bound by sustaining life," said Richard Webb, a second-year medical student who conducted the orchestra for the memorial service. "It really builds up your stomach and nerves, and after that you can pretty much do anything."
Health privacy laws limit what students can learn about the body they dissect. They aren't, for instance, told the person's name, what chronic health problems they had, or how they died. Bit by bit on their medical exploration, students fill in most of those gaps. In the end, once they unearth tumors and pacemakers and analyze the body's feet and hands, what they actually piece together is a picture of life.
"You look at the hands. Are they weathered? Do they have big muscles in their arms? Then they might have been a laborer," said Matthew Ferguson, who took anatomy last summer and returned this semester as a teaching assistant for the class. "There's a lot you can figure out. It's kind of like being a detective."
Webb's team learned that its cadaver, an elderly woman, had undergone numerous surgeries. From the way her bones and muscles were shaped, they also figured out that she'd spent many years in a wheelchair, and the pattern of her wasted muscles told them that she'd had a stroke.
They named her Gracie, because they knew she'd had a tough life, and wanted to wish her some grace.
What students can't learn about from their work in the lab, however, is their donor's character. Families in attendance on Monday gathered in small groups outside the chapel after the service and told that side of the story, clutching tightly to their pink seashells and reminiscing.
Barbara and Bill Morrison traveled from Columbia to attend the service, because both of Bill Morrison's parents had been donors. After a lifetime of philanthropy, Leonard Morrison, 83, made one final gift: giving his body to science so that a new generation of health professionals could begin to practice their craft.
"He was always really giving," said Barbara Morrison. "We're still getting letters from what seems like every charitable organization in the country thanking him."
Martha Broach, whose 62-year-old sister Mary Ann Rhodes died of a brain aneurysm, said she once worried that her sister's body wouldn't be treated with dignity in the medical school labs. But after seeing the students join forces to perform bluegrass spirituals, hymns and poetry readings, she knew her fears were for naught.
"I'm sure they were good to her," Broach said. "I now know that they were."
As the service neared its end, a choral benediction sounded through the church, just as a baby in the family section of the chapel cried out. As if in tribute to the child's relative, the singers' voices rose above the infant's cry with "Child of wonder, child of God ... I remembered you."
Holly Auer covers health and medicine. She can be reached at (843) 937-5560 or
hauer@postandcourier.com.
http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/1204/arc12072054674.shtml
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They would love it