Lab Services/Necropsy

Necropsy is a good rotation for pondering your own mortality. We all go into thinking that it's going to be uber gross, cutting up dead dogs, cats, cows, horses, goats, and miscellaneous wild animals. But once you start cutting, it stops bothering you. You hardly even register that what you're cutting up was alive yesterday and that maybe somebody loved it.

We all know that we have internal organs. Sure, I have intestines, a heart, lungs, kidneys etc. But your body still seems magically impervious. It's not a biological machine, it's you, it's different. It's not until you're cutting something else up that used to be all magical that you realize you're not any different either. I look at my cats sometimes and think about their organs...and it's weird.

And seeing the trauma cases that come in, it's suddenly very clear how easy it is to die.

What's especially interesting is the proportion of Christian doctors who work in pathology. The greater majority are strong Christians. I like to believe it's because they see the tenuous aftermath of life every day and they realize that everything ends.

I invite anyone who is going to speculate on spirituality, life after death, and the existence of the soul to cut up a cow. There are certain epiphanies you can only have if you're trying to pull the trachea out of a half ton cow.

Speaking of which! We have necropsy rounds every Friday at 1:15 where we show off the most interesting lesions we found that week. I've been lucky and presented two cases every week so far. Jeremy came last week, he loved it (just ask him!).