Into the dissection hall

 

Our batch entered med school during the COVID times, when rules about social distancing and wearing masks were to be strictly adhered to. But as the famous saying goes:

“Exceptions prove the rule.” I understood the truth of this statement on the very first day of offline anatomy practical, when we stepped into the dissection hall.

Our extended family has many doctors and I had heard many stories about this place from them- like how people faint or become nauseated seeing the cadavers and the bare viscera. Fortunately, or unfortunately the people in my group (our batch was divided into 4 groups for dissection classes) were some of the most courageous people, with the most imperturbable stomachs. Thus, I never had the opportunity to see anyone fainting our getting sick in the dissection hall.

The day I stepped into the dissection hall I realized that COVID norms were to be kept at bay before entering this place, because there were just 2 cadavers for the 252 students of our batch! So, there were almost 63 people per group standing as close to each other as possible peering down at the cadaver.

Needless to say, that with so many students and so less cadavers we never really got to do hands-on dissection. What we mostly did was prosection, that is, we observed as our teachers dissected the bodies and viscera and learnt to identify the parts.

The standing arrangement was always first come, first serve. Thus, it was always problematic for students like me who were stupid and unsmart enough to be left behind tall and healthy people who covered up the entire dissection window with their length and width. Then, no matter how much we wished to be long-necked giraffes or cursed these batchmates secretly, we never got to see anything.

But as the good witch told Chhota Bheem:

“Whenever there is a problem, there is always a solution.” For us the solution presented itself in the form of long wooden stools in the dissection hall. We used to stand on them for a bird eye view of the dissection table. Also, some of these smart, always-forward batchmates would explain the dissection to people like us after Sir would leave. I must admit that at times these explanations were better than the original class, as we had an extremely soft-spoken teacher and people standing on stools could hardly hear him from up above. Also, it helped us to revise the points taught in class and have further discussions based on what we learnt from the book.\

Initially though, we found the stench of rotting bodies and formalin really disturbing but later on people grew so used to the smell that some would even eat lunch sitting right outside the dissection hall! Initially, we would use tweezers to hold the nerves and arteries, but a month or so later I remember myself picking up human intestines from the sink with formalin-water using my bare hands. Its possible to get used to the most impossible stuff too, you know!

I remember being secretly terrified of one of our cadavers- a grandpa with long white hair, so much so that initially, I would never go anywhere near him. But the other one, who was also another grandpa, seemed friendly enough. So I named him “Cadaver Dadu” (Grandpa Cadaver).

Well, with everything else kept aside, anatomy practicals were some of the most enjoyable lessons of first year and I took extreme pleasure in describing the gory details of each of these cadavers and viscera to my non-medico friends or my family members at the dinner table (much to my parents’ spite)!!!!!😂😂