Grandpapa’s Gift
Grandpapa had a gift for storytelling. / Sitting on the two-legged stools at the end of the Hutong,
Tag: gross anatomy dissection
Contributing Writer and Social Media Manager
Tulane University School of Medicine
Yichi Zhang is a third-year MD/MBA student at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Tulane University with a B.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology and a minor in Psychology.
In his free time, Yichi enjoys playing tennis, teaching Chinese, and practicing Kendo.
After he graduates medical school, Yichi wishes to pursue a career in Internal Medicine, with a focus on personalized medicine, all the while building more connections between the American and Chinese medical communities.
His Last, First Breath
As I unzip the synthetic shroud, / he breathes his last, first breath: / one final exhalation from the plastic pleura / before we make acquaintance.
A Meditation on the Anatomy Lab
This feeling of loss and subsequent reflection revealed to me something fundamental about how I experience time in my own life. As I depart the anatomy lab, I stand on the shores of time’s river and gaze into the clear water’s surface. In it, I see a reflection of growth and of internal transformation — a reflection not of who I was but of who I have become. I emerge not only learned in anatomy but also with insight into the impact that individuals can have on one another.
Reflections on Donor 8
On the first day of anatomy, we were reminded that this course was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and that we were privileged to be experiencing it. For those of us first-year medical students who might not pursue surgery nor experience physically interacting with and entering the human body again outside of surgical clerkships, the professors said this would be an intense time. We would peer into the spaces and structures that — on some level — make up every human being.
Ms. Metaphysics
I am sitting in school / but I am also thinking of you. / Yes, I do / wonder how consciousness / wraps round and round / this hunk of meat, / how chunks of flesh / sustain your metaphysical feat.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: Epilogue
I no longer feel alone the way that I did the first few weeks of dissections, because now I recognize that my peers were sectioned off at their tables also worried that they were losing their sensitivity, that they weren’t good enough to belong, and they didn’t know how to cut into a person. I wish that I had known what my classmates were thinking and feeling during the anatomy course.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: The Final Disposition
Why would someone choose to donate their body to medical education? We have a dishonorable history in medicine of illicitly sourcing cadavers for dissection: robbing corpses from graves, murdering people for their bodies and salvaging the unclaimed dead from city hospitals and morgues. Today, we call the bodies we learn from “donors” instead of “cadavers” to honor their autonomy and personhood, their choice to be in the room.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: The Lifecycle of Anatomy Instruction
It is the day before the first anatomy lab for the first-year medical students, and a single professor walks alone, up and down rows of tables laden with 26 naked, embalmed bodies. He silently shares a few minutes with the donors, a private thank-you. Soon the donors will be covered in white sheets, and the students will tentatively spill through the locked wooden doors of the labs, a rush of anticipation, teamwork, questions and learning.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: The Assembly of a Medical Student
In the golden glow of a fall day, 104 first-year medical students parade out of the medical center carrying boxes of bones to aide our anatomy lab studies. The crates look suspiciously like instrument cases, perhaps the size of an alto saxophone, and it feels absurd to march back to our houses a la The Music Man, knowing all the while that we are bringing real live (well, dead) human skeletons into our living rooms, kitchens and coat closets.
Dissecting Anatomy Lab: Introduction
Over the next four weeks, I will share a series of essays with you in which I tell some of those stories. This writing results from the work of a summer, supported by a summer research fellowship in Medical Humanities & Bioethics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, in which I interviewed nine first-year medical students, two third-year medical students, eight anatomy and medical humanities professors, two Anatomical Gift Program staff, three palliative care clinicians, two preregistered donors and one donor’s family member.
History of Present Illness — A Medical School Short Horror Film
A first-year medical student’s stress and anxiety begin to take physical form as she navigates her first year of medical school.
Circle of Life
A loud cry as we enter the world. / A silent cry as we depart.
Contributing Writer
Northeast Ohio Medical University
Puja Mohan is a second year medical student at Northeast Ohio Medical University. In 2019, she graduated from Kent State University's BS/MD program with a Bachelor of Science degree. In her free time, Puja enjoys writing, music, as well as spending time with friends and family.