The Anatomist - Bill Hayes [15]
The men in the group share a nervous chuckle.
“You know what I’m talking about,” Dana says matter-of-factly. “Usually, the left testicle hangs lower than the right. Right?”
One could almost see the wheels turning as the assembled males each perform a mental inspection of their underwear.
“Right,” I volunteer on behalf of my shyer classmates.
“Well,” Dana continues, “this is likely because the left renal vein runs between two high-pressure arteries, so it may get slightly occluded—or squished. Less blood can travel through it, so the blood pools down in the left testicle, making it a little heavier than the right one.”
Now here’s some juicy small talk for a lagging dinner party, I can’t help but think.
“Okay, let’s move on now,” Dana chirps, drawing our focus back to the object in her gloved hand. The “pitiful appearance” of kidneys is deceiving, she notes; these are strong, resilient organs, capable of impressive multitasking. They not only filter waste and toxins from the blood but regulate urine excretion while simultaneously maintaining the body’s electrolyte and fluid balance. If one kidney is removed or fails, the other will pick up the slack and do double duty.
The kidneys also provide a perfect illustration of an age-old anatomical truth: the body is designed to protect itself, not to be easy to dissect. As Henry Gray noted in his precise fashion 150 years ago, the kidneys are situated between the back of the abdominal cavity and another eight separate structures, including two powerful back muscles, and are “surrounded by a considerable quantity of fat,” even in the lean. All of which makes finding a kidney in a cadaver tricky. The best method, Gray advised, is not to go through the abdomen but to flip the body over, count down to the last rib, drop down another three-quarters of an inch (about two centimeters), then make your incision there.
Before rotating to the next group, Dana shows us the proper way to open up a kidney, carefully splitting it in two lengthwise. Like a pomegranate, whose leathery rind belies its jewel box interior, the kidney is spectacular on the inside. Each half is lined with the small chambers and pyramid-shaped tissue of the organ’s filtering system. Once everyone has taken a close look, we break up into our smaller groups and return to our cadavers. The goal: to replicate what Dana had so nimbly demonstrated.
As an observer, I have the option to move about the lab, from cadaver to cadaver, from group to group. (This is how I’d finally met the Woman in the Gas Mask from the first lab. Beneath the hazmat headwear was a lovely person named Iris, who is pregnant, it turns out, and, on the advice of her obstetrician, takes the extra precaution for her baby.) Although each lab lasts three hours, students are free to leave as soon as they finish the day’s assignments, and most of them do. But I like to stick around until the last body is re-draped. The whole experience has quickly come to seem normal to me; friends beg to differ, however, when I mention I am attending a course in anatomy.
“You mean, with bodies?” is always their first response. “Actual dead bodies?!”
What’s missing from their mental picture, I have come to understand, is the larger context. Just as a person who has never before stepped inside a church could gather from the altar and hushed candlelit atmosphere that it is a place of worship, so, too, could one enter the anatomy lab for the first time and readily grasp its purpose. Chalkboards line the entire back wall. Bookstands, poised at every table, hold identical manuals. Display cases and neatly labeled drawers contain anatomical models and specimens. Most important, though, is what happens about ten minutes into each lab: the instructors enter, at once transforming the space into a learning center of crackling vitality.
In putting together a team for the course, Dana’s first move was to coax back from early retirement the man she considers one of the leading anatomists