What will you decide to do with your body after death ?
Warning ! I do not want to shock anyone with this article. I respect everyone's choice. I have rewritten this article dozens of times to try to make my ideas clear. I hope you will be understanding.
When I was in second grade, I had the opportunity to rent a human skeleton to study and learn the human anatomy by myself. For us, medical students, it's a great gift to be able to learn about real bones, to be able to manipulate them and analyze them in 3 dimensions. For 6 months I shared my room with my skeleton. He taught me a lot about anatomy, but it also allowed me to have a connection with the person that this 'man' was. Someone once made the choice to help Science move forward, to allow medical students to train and learn anatomy. I often thought about this person.
To help me feel less guilty about analyzing his bones but also to feel really connected to him, I decided to give him a name "Ambroise". Like Ambroise Paré (considered the father of modern surgery).
Giving a name to "my skeleton" was a way for me to remember that these bones in front of me once made up the skeleton of a person like you and me. It may seem odd to give a name to a skeleton but it was more reassuring for me, it was my way to realize the value of objects that I had in my hands.
It's as if this person helped me to study. "Ambroise" helped me to deepen my anatomy, he taught me to pay attention to certain parts of the human body that were hidden, etc ...
For medical students, it is essential to understand the human body and to see it as it really is.
I can not thank enough the people who make this choice to entrust their body to Science to advance students in their studies but also for doctors, surgeons and other specialists to develop new surgical techniques or continue to make progress in medicine.
It's always difficult to talk about what we want for our body after our death, nobody ever wants to think about it and that's normal. If I was not in medicine I think I would never have thought of it. Yet it is important.
Science continually needs you to continue to evolve, whether it is to develop new surgical techniques, to train future doctors, but also to save patients through donations of blood or organs.
When a person dies (at the hospital) the family is often asked if the deceased has agreed to donate his organs. If so, some organs will be removed, such as kidneys, lungs, eyes, heart, liver, skin, etc. These organs will allow other seriously ill people to return to normal life.
The graft is usually taken from brain-dead donors. In this case, the vital functions of the donor are maintained in activity by the medical team through machines that will help him to breathe and keep his heart beating. This way the deceased is kept alife artificially long enough to collect and keep all the organs in a good state. This helps save some people who are terminally ill and need the organs.
Some transplants are sometimes given people during their lifetime (most of the time to help a family member).
The organs that can be removed from a living person are the kidney, the skin, the bone marrow, and more rarely a part of the liver or lung.
Be careful, it is very important not to confuse organ donations with body donations.
Organ donations are done to save lives or to treat sick people, while donating bodies to science allows researchers to advance science and also allows future doctors to train.
I’ve had an accident myself at 16 and had to have my knee operated twice. I had to receive a ligament transplant to allow me to walk properly. Thanks to someone I do not know, I can walk normally without pain.
My life did not depend on it at all, but for some people, the transplant is the only way to continue living.
I hope you enjoyed this article and that you know more about this part of medicine.
kiss
D.
References and more curiosities :
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ambroise-Pare
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525495/
https://journals.lww.com/ccmjournal/Abstract/2003/09000/Role_of_brain_death_and_the_dead_donor_rule_in_the.19.aspx
https://ec.europa.eu/health/blood_tissues_organs/organs_en
You are right. I haven't given it much of a thought. But we all should. When there is no hope left for us we can give hope to someone or the world overall through advancing science. Btw, is it possible to donate both body and organs or is it like a binary choice we have to make. Can it be like, of I die make the most of me?
Thank you ! I'm not sure, but I think you have to choose between body donation and organ donation, because these are two completely different procedures. In addition the organs are also studied by medical students and surgeons ;-)
I hope I have answered your question
I think organ donation is one of the best things a person can do. It allows so much life to come from one death. I'm sure it is hard for families to make that decision on behalf of their loved ones, especially when they are technically still "alive," but it is such an amazing gift. Thanks for writing about a topic that is important but difficult to talk about. And I'm glad your knee is okay!
Thank you ! Yes it is a delicate subject to discuss, I hope I have spoken about it with caution
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