| This Is Not the End |
| By Chen Mei-yi Translated by Tang Yau-yang |
Photo by Li Bai-shi Lying on the operating table was a fine-featured, 17-year-old young man. He wore a red jacket, black pants, and nothing on his feet. His fists were lightly closed. Two fresh suture scars on his shaved head indicated that he had been operated on not long before, yet here he was about to go under the knife again. However, this young man wasn’t facing surgery, but medical dissection. At his age, he should have been studying in a classroom, biking in the countryside, or waiting in line to buy tickets to a hot movie. Instead, he was lying here on a cold slab, his mouth closed and eyes shut. Medical students from Tzu Chi University filed into the room, and physicians from Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital donned surgical gowns and gloves. When the moment came, the young man’s jacket and pants were sheared and removed. His diaper was taken away and a towel was placed over his lower body. He now lay naked on the operating table. Though a cadaver, he struck me as a most solemn offering at a sacrificial altar. Tzu Chi volunteers came in and started chanting the name of Amitabha Buddha. The physicians and students who would anatomize the body stood quietly around him. The air seemed to have frozen. When Dr. Hsu Yung-hsiang (許永祥), head of pathology at Hualien Tzu Chi Hospital, gave a signal, everyone bowed in silent prayer. I suddenly felt my breathing stop as the anatomy process started. A doctor deftly slid a scalpel down the abdomen, leaving a line of blood, and then he made another incision near the throat. Before long, I saw white intermingling with red—ribs among flesh and blood. The rhythmic sound of the Buddhist chants was abruptly overwhelmed by the jarring sound of an electric saw. The teenager’s ribs were sawed off on either side of his body and lifted off, exposing his thoracic organs. The young man now surreally resembled a plastic teaching model at a hospital or school. Physicians skillfully harvested his organs—intestines, liver, kidneys, heart…everything. As they did so, other participants were busy cleaning away blood, taking photos, collecting specimens, or writing notes. Everyone did what they needed to do, and nobody said a word. Dr. Hsu moved to the young man’s head, squatted down, and drew a half circle from one ear to the other with his scalpel, slitting the scalp open. Then he peeled the scalp back to expose the skull. Though this was not the first time the medical students had participated in an anatomy session, they were all solemn and fully concentrated, demonstrating their respect toward this session of learning and toward the young man, whose body was helping them to learn. The teenager was about their age, but he was no longer conscious or breathing. The medical students were still healthy, youthful, vibrant, and they had full and promising lives ahead of them. As the young man’s brain was being extracted, other participants sheared open his large intestine. The filth that flowed out made me think of something that the Buddha taught: Contemplate the body as impure. If you know that the body is impure, you won’t develop an attachment to it. From non-attachment comes freedom. However handsome or beautiful a person is, he or she is like any other person on the inside. When it comes to the end, we are all the same. When that day comes, you are either burned to ashes or buried in the ground where your body will gradually decay. No matter how wealthy you are, what good looks you have, or how high your social status is, all that dissipates like smoke. What’s the point of getting hung up on appearances, status, and the tangible trappings of life? Gradually, the body became quite hollow as the physicians removed the things they needed. After the internal organs were taken out, they began carefully removing the muscles and fat from the body. After that was done, they stuffed cotton into the space where the brain once was, replaced the skullcap, pulled up the scalp, and sewed up the incisions. The same procedures were applied to the thoracic and abdominal cavities. In the end, they wiped the body with warm water to remove the blood stains. The young man looked much like he had before the dissection, only with new suture scars. His face still looked at peace, mouth closed and eyes shut. The whole session seemed like a sacred ceremony. There was no trace of any foul smell in the lab, only a hint of sandalwood incense. There was no noise, only the soothing sound of volunteers chanting the name of Amitabha Buddha. It had lasted just under two hours. Afterwards, the body would be sent to a crematorium, just as it would have been without the anatomy dissection, but the dissection session greatly amplified the legacy of the young man. Master Cheng Yen says, “We don’t own our body, only the right to use it.” The young man and other body donors like him have utilized their bodies to the fullest and thus made their lives more meaningful. Specimens taken during sessions like this can assist clinicians to find the cause of a disease or help them diagnose a case. The specimens can also serve as valuable teaching aids for medical students. If general anatomy is the study of the structure of the body, pathologic anatomy is for solving mysteries. This branch of anatomy has helped researchers demystify many horrifying diseases, like polio and meningococcal meningitis. Only with new understanding of such diseases will their diagnosis, management, treatment, or even prevention become possible. A crucial key to such discovery processes is the availability of cadavers. When people donate their bodies for such purposes, their generous donations open doors for them into another realm in which their legacies live on, even though their physical lives have passed. Though this young man may have lived only a short life, what he offered through his body would live forever. For him, passing on is staying on. Death is not an end, but a beginning. |
|
