Dissection: The end of a sphincter

Week two of dissection, and after effectively hollowing out the thorax we turned our attention towards the abdomen. Here, there was some fairly interesting and unusual pathology to see throughout the room – a massive liver cancer, adrenal cancers, enlarged hearts and pacemakers. Unfortunately our body had been savaged by a sarcoma, skewing the anatomy making it difficult to identify a lot of structures.

Of course the most grisly and sickening moment of the course was saved right until last – a rectum packed full of old, partly-petrified faeces. It just isn’t possible to remove it all cleanly – that requires a lot of time, syringing and paper rolls, and it stinks.

Now I’ll admit that at the time (and this is far easier to see in retrospect), I shamefully started to blame the person that had donated their body. As if the cancer was somehow their fault, and that they could have emptied their bowels on their death bed for our convenience.

Like I said - shamefully, and I do feel genuinely so. But when you’re digging around a body cavity somewhat frantically, trying to find all the relevant anatomy and fully aware that there won’t be many other opportunities to do this again, it is possible to slip into such deplorable mindsets.

Instead, I found myself reciting one of the many mantras of medicine:

“Shit happens, deal with it.”