In 2019 (I know this because I know I was bald at the time), we had a Rotary day out to the Colorado Learning Center of Human Anatomy. It is a cadaver teaching lab, that has what they call a "living donor" program. This allows people who want to donate their bodies to science for research and instruction to spend time before they die telling their stories. This can be anything that they find relevant about themselves, from their interests, health habits, or disease and injury histories. Having an access to the personal narratives of the donors (whom they call "teachers" posthumously), allows deeper insight into how the body adapts to habits or alterations (injury, illness, surgery, etc).
When we visited them four years ago, I was super jazzed about wanting to donate my own body, and to enter the living donor program. I took a brochure, but I faced the impenetrable wall of telephone anxiety, and I never made the call. Then the pandemic happened, and I lost all my nerve and assumed I'd never have the chance again. Today I got another crack at it. The director of the center was our Rotary speaker, and I stuck around after the meeting to re-engage with her. I explained to her how my own terror regarding initiating phone calls froze me up years ago, and asked how we could get around that. I got an email and a number I could text. I haven't contacted her yet, but that's more because she suggested I explain to my doctors that this is a desire of mine, and I figured I'd at least talk to my oncologist tomorrow before starting the application process.
There was one of the living donors present today as well. I chatted with her while I waited for my chance to speak with the director. She had the same peace and enthusiasm about donating herself that I feel every time I think about this opportunity. I could sense it emanating from her. I would like the chance to talk to her again, on a peer status as another living donor. She told me that her husband had already passed and become a teacher at the center. She said she had the chance to see, and maybe she said hold, his heart at one point. She said she thought it might be preserved in fluid, so that she could hug the container. But instead, there were hearts from three teachers, embalmed, in open air in front of them. She wasn't prepared for how intensely emotional she felt. I'm not sure whether I would want my family to encounter me in such a way. I kind of think, in this moment, I'd prefer they just know that I was providing heretofore undiscovered data about lupus or whatever they can get off of me, from a distance. There will be time to work that out, though. I'm in no rush.
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