Decapitation

We decapitated our cadaver today. I'm not sure which I dislike getting in my hair more, dead guy parts or live guy vomit/blood/feces/urine. Well, considering most of my future patients are going to be living (or at least on the verge of living), I guess I should like the latter more. I'm so sick of anatomy. It is so foul. Not only did we have to take the guy's head off, we had to saw down through the middle of his face. I elected to saw through the top of his head from the back so I wouldn't have to watch the blade going through his face, but it was still nasty enough.

We learned something interesting in lecture today about "brain death." Did you know, if you are in a persistent vegetative state and your family elects to keep you hooked up to the ventilator, when you finallly do die they will get a bill from the hospital? Medicare/Medi-Cal doesn't cover very much, and most insurance companies have a limit. The lecturing doctor said people can go bankrupt, lose their retirements, their childrens' college funding, etc. over the bill incurred by keeping your body running. Also, regardless of what your driver's license says, your next of kin still has to legally approve of organ harvesting if you should end up in the position of being an organ donor. So, to make this quite clear, I don't want to be kept on machines after my brain is dead or if I have no chance of being myself after a so-called recovery. Just pull the plug! They can have my organs, I won't need them anymore. Did you know that an otherwise healthy donor can change 8 people's lives for the better by giving good organs?