Carly’s Comments (group member since Nov 18, 2022)

Carly’s comments from the Read With Me! group.

Love everything Caitlin Doughty writes. Do you happen to follow her youtube channel? Have you read her other books? I loved From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death.

After working in healthcare and seeing lots of death in a short time, Caitlin's books really helped me be prepared. Nothing can fully prepare you, but I was glad that I had been involved in the death acceptance movement and had been well-read on the topic at the very least.

If my young cousins ever had questions about death, I would recommend that the parents read Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies with them to help the kids talk about it and understand. Confusion can be a big source of pain when grieving; the obvious antidote is knowledge and understanding.

The way American culture interacts with death is so unhealthy. The thing I learned from From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death book and my own experience is that humans create grieving rituals for a reason. If you experience loss in your life, emotionally it's beneficial to have a ritual, an action to assign to grief. After a person dies, there is nothing to be done usually. I found lighting a candle for a deceased patient, drinking their favorite drink (often found in personal notes in long-term care patients), and spending a few minutes journaling and contemplating the person helped me. Anyway, off-topic. I just love this author.

This book was what got me into non-fiction. I cannot believe this woman literally saved millions of lives and went so long without recognition.

The questions of medical ethics raised in this book were fascinating. I think it's a great case study of the drawbacks of utilitarianism. Henrietta Lacks is a prime example of bad medical ethics. However, her mistreatment has saved millions of lives. Her tissue sample should never have been used without her knowledge or consent. Pharmaceutical companies should never have made millions of dollars from her cells without compensating her family. Is it right to benefit all of humanity so greatly, to the detriment of one person?

In some respects, I'm conflicted even reading about it. Would she have consented to the world knowing her medical history and for her family to be made a spectacle of? OR does it honor her to learn her story and learn FROM her mistreatment to do better in the future? Lots of questions here. I don't think there is a right answer.

I'm curious about this one. What were your thoughts?

Tina wrote: "Carly wrote: "Loved this book. I know the topic was offputting to some, but I feel like Mary Roach was able to keep a really funny light-hearted tone.

After this point, I will discuss some specif..."

oh you should! I attended the university of utah. Their undergraduate cadaver lab is one of the largest in the country. You get to see specimens in your first anatomy lab (I was a sophomore), there's also an auxiliary lab in the health sciences building with specimens prepared in more resilient ways (wet specimens and preserved in acrylic. I saw that as part of an elective in my first semester. You don't get to do any dissections until advanced anatomy (which I never took). You get to check out a box of model bones in the library. There's also an osteology lab, but I never took osteology.

I highly recommend you seek out a class with real tissue if you have the chance, it was amazing. You got to see some unusual anatomy. This one person had an extra azygous and hemiazygous vein. There are vestigial muscles (such as the psoas minor, rectus sternalis, and palmaris longus) that aren't in everyone (I don't have any of them as far as I can tell). There were hearts with assistive devices, cardiomegaly, and cardiomyopathy. It taught me that there is room for much more variation than expected in what is considered "normal anatomy". You can't get it from a book or a picture.

T.V. is surprisingly close to real life. There are a lot of jokes. You'd be surprised to see many people can be in a room and no one says anything. Often times the TA'S are the ones setting the inappropriate tone. The prank mentioned in my last comment was actually between TA's. The specimens are quite old (they last a long time with the preservation techniques) and disembodied it's easy to never realize that they belonged to a person.
I'm embarrassed to say I was pretty immature at the time. I laughed at the jokes, and only realized how messed up they were once I left. I think taking the class after having gained this perspective would have been beneficial, but more taxing emotionally. Some of the specimens would have felt more grotesque if the reality had sunk in. (squeamish folk stop here).

I'm thinking particularly of a cranial midsaggital dissection. It was very useful to visualize the upper respiratory tract, sinuses, digestive system, and brain, but, it is just the right side of someone's head on a lazy Susan.

Loved this book. I know the topic was offputting to some, but I feel like Mary Roach was able to keep a really funny light-hearted tone.

After this point, I will discuss some specifics of the book. I'm not sure you can spoil non-fiction, but if you haven't read the book yet stop here.

The part where they discussed how donor cadavers can be treated by students really resonated with me. In college in the human anatomy lab, there were several instances where people behaved inappropriately with the specimens. To keep it vague, people played jokes with certain disembodied parts. It was bizarre and uncomfortable. I think the students would have benefited from some of the practices described in the book such as interacting with donor families or having a discussion at the start of class reminding students that the specimens were real people.