Death, us and our bodies: personal reflections
We need to rethink our attitudes to the bodies of the dead in order to increase our willingness to donate organs and tissues
My father died aged 87 on January 20, 1998. It was the day of his 42nd wedding anniversary. He been admitted to a major teaching hospital with jaundice of unknown origin. He died after a medical procedure and a delay in diagnosis and management of bleeding after the procedure. I believed it was important to understand why he had died and what the underlying cause of his jaundice had been. I requested an autopsy.
My father was not only the best father a person could have had, but my closest friend. The circumstances of his death were especially sad for me. I was on a plane while he was allowed to die of blood loss in intensive care over a period of hours, becoming progressively more delirious and experiencing the slow motion throes of death. I was told he had died while I was still in the air. My first thought was that I would never again see him or hear his deep chuckle. I would never again feel the gentle touch of his large hands. He would never see my daughter grow up as he had wanted to, playing, and laughing on the beach.
I have witnessed many autopsies. As medical students, we had to attend autopsy each morning at 8.30 am as a part of pathology in fourth year medicine. Before this, we had two years of anatomy dissection, probing every crevice of the formalin fixed human body. I learnt an immense amount from these activities. But I also knew how gruesome the autopsy is. I knew that an autopsy would mean that my father would be dismembered. But I had no hesitation in requesting …
