Cadavers and tissue donation and surgery, oh my!
The first time I encountered a cadaver was in nursing school. We had a gross anatomy lab and dissected a full cadaver to learn some hands-on lessons about the human body. The body was of an elderly woman and I remember thinking it was incredible that someone donated their body just so I could learn. Beyond organ donation (which I knew about), it never really occurred to me that people donated body parts for reasons other than learning purposes (like cadaver lab). I didn't know that bones and ligaments and heart valves and veins and skin can be frozen and used to help improve the quality of life of the living. It certainly never occurred to me that I might ever have cadaver parts sewn into me. For my first ACL surgery (7 years ago), I had cadaver tendons used to replace my torn anterior cruciate ligament. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I didn't think much of it. I wanted my knee fixed and the "donated tissue" being used to fix it wasn't even ...