Fleshing Out The Cadaver Lab

By Noah Kelly, Campus Editor

Illustrations by Jeff Chang, Head Illustrator

    In a small, well-lit laboratory room, Alex Vance has a scalpel in one hand and a flap of skin in her other. She begins to flay Wayne, who is face down on a gurney, brown gauze wrapped around his head. Not but 10 feet away from her is Dr. Pal, the “Cadaver Queen,” who is forearm-deep inside the body cavity of Matilda, feeling around for something very specific.
     “Aha!” Dr. Pal exclaims, and she indicates for Ms. Vance to come over and examine Matilda further. Ms. Vance coos, as though deep within Matilda a kitten was found, but that is not the case. What has been located is a rare find, “A uterus,” Dr. Jacqueline Pal says. Jeremy Wallender looks up briefly, less enthused about the discovery, before going back to his work on the opposite side of Wayne from Ms. Vance, sheering away the flesh from Wayne’s shoulder.
     This is not a scene from the reboot of Silence of the Lambs. This is actually happening on campus, and in person, it was quite heartfelt.
     See, Matilda and Wayne have both been dead for some time now, years even, and have been preserved with chemicals (not formaldehyde though, as that is a toxic substance no longer able to be used in California) and have had their bodies donated to science. Matilda and Wayne are now essentially textbooks for students in the Prosection class, and also various other majors including anatomy, illustration, and kinesiology.
     Past a nondescript door in one of the science buildings is the cadaver lab. In one of the two rooms is Wayne and Matilda, who are actively being operated on. In the other room stay the other cadavers: Sofia, Errol, Louise, Zoe, Leroy, and Francois. The other six are in various states of preservation, Francois being among the most deteriorated. His body was actually from the ’70s, back when formaldehyde was used, and because of this he is actually in better shape for his age. Sofia, who is from only 2001, doesn’t look all that dissimilar from François save for the color (François is reddish brown, reminiscent of deep rust, or a pulled-pork sandwich, while Sofia is much paler, close to buttermilk).
These cadavers are absolutely nothing like what appears on television. They are not distinctively defined in their faces, they are not plump and fresh like an actor with pale blue paint on them. These cadavers are desiccated and stiff, their skin a combination of yellow and white, and yet they still hold a wealth of information.
     These cadavers are not actually named Wayne, or Matilda, or Sofia, but these are the nicknames given to them by students like Ms. Vance and Dr. Pal. The cadavers are still people, regardless of the fact that they are dead and are being used for science, and as such, still hold the right to be treated with respect. Photography is not allowed, and an early indicator of class performance is student reaction upon their first visit to the cadaver lab. Anyone making disrespectful comments or not treating the deceased with utmost care are easily culled from the roster by Dr. Pal.
     Despite being dead and completely unable to communicate (unless renowned psychic and politician John Edwards pays us a visit), the cadavers begin to develop their own personalities and quirks. Matilda was named after “Waltzing Matilda,” an Australian country folk song, due to Matilda constantly “waltzing” from one lab room to the other. Wayne was named (and the group is still on the fence about Wayne as a nickname) due to his large barrel chested-ness, reminding them of John Wayne.
     Watching Dr. Pal, or lecturer Tiffany Price, or even Alex Vance perform their delicate procedures, it is clear they hold a great deal of respect and earnestness for their work and their charges. There is a certain intimacy that is achieved from prodding, cutting, and examining these bodies. Price, Vance, and Dr. Pal all agree that the deeper one gets, peeling layer and layer off like an onion, the more the body speaks. Not all too dissimilar from gardeners who commune with their plants, there is a palpable level of affection this group has for all of their cadavers.
     Not everything is flowers and puppies here in the lab though. There is a distinct smell that permeates the two lab rooms (something akin to plastic and alcohol) that reminds one of the dissection classes from middle school. The smell, even after only being in there for an hour and a half, still burns slightly in the nostrils several hours afterwards, and can infuse the clothes and hair of those who make prolonged visits to the lab.
     As Ms. Vance takes her time scraping the top layer of skin from Wayne’s back, freeing it from the fatty layer resting below, she recounts that after her first day (two weeks ago) on which she peeled about a one 1’x 6” strip from Wayne. She went to eat an orange a little later that day, and upon the initial peeling said, “Nah, I don’t really want this anymore.” This is not the only time when one of the workers has been left hungry and unenthused about eating after their extended time working with the cadavers, and it’s not surprising; despite handling the cadavers with loving care, they are still working with the flesh and bone of a human being.
     It is hard not to make correlations from the human body to that of the animals we eat, and sometimes Dr. Pal and the others will make references to filet mignon, or ribs, or carne asada as running jokes as they examine different parts of the body. It is not so much a strong stomach that is needed to partake in this, but really a strong desire to learn and be fascinated by the human body itself.
     CSULB acquires these cadavers from UCI, at a ranging price of $3,500-$4,500. They are delivered here by specifically licensed transporters, and usually when classes are not being held, so as to not alarm students by wheeling bright neon orange body bags INTO the building. The question remains though: which would be more perplexing, the wheeling of bodies into the science building, or the wheeling of bodies out of the science building?
Of the eight bodies that are currently in the lab, the cadaver lab has just very recently acquired two “fresh” bodies who haven’t even been seen by all of the students, let alone been named by anyone yet. As semesters go on though, these two will undoubtedly join the ranks of the named and personified.
     The bodies are unlike organ donors, in which they might come from healthy and young individuals. Instead, these cadavers are almost exclusively over the age of 80, often times with organs that have been polluted by years of substance abuse, surgeries, or cancer. This state of being is what makes some of the organ finds so rare, and interesting. For instance, in the case of the uterus being found in Matilda, it is quite common for women of her age to have undergone a hysterectomy, thus depriving the lab students of a chance to explore a specific organ. In a humorous revelation, plastic mock-ups of these inner workings of the body are about twice as expensive as the cadavers themselves, and yet the cadavers are infinitely more interesting and informative.
     In this fascinating, albeit cramped laboratory, semesters will flash by, and Dr. Pal, the curator of cadavers, will still be here, but students like Alex Vance and Jeremy Wallender will graduate and move on. New, young hands will take the reigns of unraveling all the secrets these cadavers, named and unnamed, still hold within their bodies. However, after watching these students and their supervisor work painstakingly slowly and carefully, no one who spends any more than a brief stay in this laboratory would ever consider using the phrase “beauty is only skin deep,” ever again.