Donor, Teacher

Inspirational song: Bodies (Drowning Pool)

For two very good reasons, I have no new pictures for today. First, as a follow up, I did get my phone battery replaced on Sunday, and the new one was no better than the one that was draining in a few hours, and shutting off the phone. So I went back to Batteries Plus today and asked them whether my problem was the battery or the phone. Turns out, it was the phone. So they put the old battery back in (I was surprised they still had it after two days), and refunded me my 65 bucks. That was nice of them, but it also means I have to get a replacement phone. I have two choices. I can commit to years of making payments on a fancy new phone, one for which I have done zero research, so I have no idea which one I want. Or I can make an attempt to replace the failing phone through the insurance I’ve been paying on for years, and pay about 15-20% as much. It wouldn’t be the latest model, but chances are it would be one or two generations younger, since my current phone is over four years old. Until I decide, I have a few days to pull all the cat photos off of it, the ones I haven’t already transferred to my laptop. I was planning on doing that maintenance anyway, so I don’t feel bad about it.

The other very good reason I didn’t take pictures, even if my phone was holding a charge worth using, was that I went to a place where picture taking was strictly forbidden. Today was the second Rotary Day Out of the year, and this time we went to a non-profit. I learned this month that there is a learning center for human anatomy in town, complete with a cadaver lab, and of course I went there to find out more about it. This place isn’t your average university-connected medical teaching facility. This is so much more. They bring in students of yoga, massage therapy, sculpture, and other disciplines, in addition to teaching current and future medical professionals. They have classes that the general public can attend, like the one coming next week about Ayurvedic principles that includes why to eat seasonally available foods for good health.

But the part that interested me the most was how they come by their bodies, and the attitude with which they approach them. They do acquire some of them, or parts of them, through brokers, but they also have a living donor program that is absolutely fascinating. When people sign up to be donors, after going through an application process to screen out people who aren’t quite serious, they become a part of the team while—and I stress this part—while they are alive. They meet with the staff of the learning center regularly, and with people who attend the classes, to learn about the person as a unique individual. They find out what sort of health they are in, what kinds of activities they do, what their hopes and dreams are. This helps to inform the students who will be learning from them after death as well as during life. They don’t refer to the donors as bodies or cadavers so much as “teachers.” Once they pass, or I suppose before hand, the teachers have unique names that they supply. We were allowed to see a donor arm from a octogenarian who went by the name of “Bud,” but down in the lab, there were names on the wall of other teachers, with names like “Purple Angel,” “Santa Cop,” and “Mr Green Genes.”

I have long struggled with what I want to happen to me after death. I know I have no interest in being buried in a lead-lined hole, encased in a non-biodegradable box. That seems like a waste. I used to say I wanted them to harvest out any good parts, and then turn the rest of me into mulch. Well, the older I get, the fewer parts of me are left, and the things I do still have are affected by lupus and cancer treatments and god knows what else. I thought being turned into a diamond would be cool, but none of my kids are into diamonds as jewelry, and I think that might end up being something they feel burdened with instead of appreciating. For the last few years, I’ve been thinking that donating my body to lupus research would be good, but I’ve heard so many horror stories about body brokers, I worried that I’d just end up being sold off as parts to a for-profit company, and that doesn’t seem to align with who I am in life, so I hesitated. Finding this non-profit today, and hearing how respectful they are towards their deceased donors, and how they embrace them while they are living, I might have just found my perfect final home. I need to be interviewed, and to interview them one on one to make sure I approve, but this seems right to me. I also need to discuss it with my kids, but I am reasonably sure they will be relieved that this detail will be one they never have to decide in my stead.

The director of the teaching center posted guidelines for how we should behave once we got to the lab. Among them were no phones/pictures, don’t crack jokes, thank the donor in your own way (that could be silently, in prayer, or another way), and learn at least one thing while there. I learned more than just one thing today, but the biggest was that there was a way I could be needed and useful long after I’m no longer actively piloting around this body. This is great.