Dedication to the Donors

Dedication to the Donors 

The stories of the donors have been collected through my own personal experience with dissection, spanning as far back as 2004. While not all of my time in the lab has been spent in active dissection, each time I took a scalpel in hand, it has been under the supervision of Gil Hedley, PhD, founder of Somanautics Workshops Inc. While I have learned a great deal from Gil and my experiences in the lab, I speak from my own personal perspective and do not represent anyone else’s views or opinions. The following is my story as it relates to the cadavers I have had the great privilege of engaging with. 

Body donation is anonymous. The small medical details received alongside a body have been included in this publication as a point of reference for what we observe once they have been cut open. It is impossible to identify a cadaver through the story I tell of it, because the story has been crafted from my personal life experience that was relevant at the time of each dissection. Were I to dissect the same body today, the narrative would be much different, because I am different. I have been profoundly altered through each exploration of body donation. Information on where the bodies traveled from or how long each one awaited its work with us is unattainable, and therefore any coincidence in timeline or corporal detail is just that. 

This text is dedicated to all the humans, past, present and future, who have donated, or intend to donate, their body to science. A special thank-you to the families of the donors who actually make it possible.  

Readers who are interested in full-body donation can contact their local university medical lab or visit this link to end up in a lab such as the ones I am writing about: https://www.anatomicalresearch.org/willed-body-donation