Meeting Betty

  I met Betty in a cold, bright laboratory early in the morning, along with nine other of her companions.  I actually met her face down on the table, looking at her broad back and short legs.  Not quite how I pictured the first time I would see a complete cadaver.
  While, I have studied the human anatomy before using a cadaver, that cadaver was already prepared for students to study, this one was 'complete' in the sense and waiting for us to begin. 
   I had signed up for the class back in the spring and the purpose of the course was to prepare corpses for just such an activity-the study of the human body in anatomy classes.  
 Arriving early for the first day of class and watching the other students arrive, I couldn't help but thing that these students all look like the students I had just finished teaching last month.  Am I getting that old and the worst thought was 'will I be the oldest one in the class'?
 Fortunately for me, another grey hair showed up and we entered the laboratory.
 I'd like to say the entrance was dramatic, but it wasn't. 
  Instead of bodies laying on tables, I saw stainless steel coffins in neat rows through the room.   Our little group was assigned one nearest the door and it was time to begin.
  So, I met Betty.  This is not her name.  I don't know her name, only a number that tells me, when I look at the listed posted on the wall, how she died.  From the short sentence by her number, I figured it had to do something with her heart and kidneys.
  Most of the donated bodies were older and had passed on from pneumonia, COPD, just plain old age.  Not ours.  She was neither old nor a typical mortality.
 Inside her metal coffin, she was wrapped in plastic (twice) to preserve the tissues, and once we opened the metal lid, the smell wrapped itself around us.  I quickly deducted the purpose of the metal shell that each body is kept in, one to help preserve it, the other to keep the smell to a minimum.
  We were to start on the back (posterior) and begin by removing the skin and then cleaning the muscles on the back for future students to study.
  Little did we know what we were getting ourselves into.  And that is the subject of my next post.