Ode to Betty

Betty is our cadaver. I didn't name her... but to the best of my recollection she was named after Betty Davis. Which I'm not sure is all that appropriate considering that she was in her 80's, bald, and we certainly never saw her eyes. Well, not then at least.

Poor Betty. She was rather anomalous and gave us a rather tough time more often than not when looking for a certain structure. She had a port-a-cath (that can really throw you for a loop if you aren't expecting it), no musculocutaneous nerve in the brachial plexus, a titanium knee, a brain aneurism, no gallbladder, a barely visible uterus, essentially no authentic teeth, no tonsils, and the teeniest biceps muscles ever (like bandaid size). All that and she died of Hodgkin's.

And then we did horrible things. We hemi-sected the leg, bisected the clitoris (ouch), removed her head, transected her head, filleted her lungs and pulled out her eyes. Her breasts went into a zip lock, as did her brain, and the head of her humerus floated around the humidor for months until it looked like a red rudolph nose.

But that's not what I wanted to say.

I wanted to say thank you to Betty. And to Betty's family. Thank you for donating your body so that I could learn medicine. No matter how much I hated every single minute of it, no matter that my eyes burned every day, no matter that I stunk and had latex allergies. I do appreciate that people are willing to sacrifice any last shred of dignity so that future physicians can intimately learn the human body.

And learn it we did.

And Betty, for the record, I was always your advocate when those who shall remain nameless affixed your (rather large) labia to your external acoustic meatus and called them ears.