Over the last few days in anatomy lab I’ve ventured into the bowels of … the bowel. Before starting dissection, I had happy notions that maybe they empty the cadavers our before we see them, maybe they stuff them with potpourri.
So not the case. My professor ambled over, reached his hands into our bodies abdomen and started poking around.
“Mhmm, mhmm,” he said, squinting his eyes, “Oh yes! This feels just like a live specimen! Seems you have a very light preservation.”
‘Light,’ here is a euphemism for “not.” We have something that should be preserved, but is not, so it is decaying.
He then went on, destroying my ideas of cleanliness.
“So, for you guys, under no means are you to open the colon. If you do, yknow, just yell ‘CODE BROWN,’ and I’ll run out the room.” He smiled and laughed, and walked away.
Since then, there have been a few silent code browns, and today, as I was doing my …
my business. It’s what I do after I finish my coffee, I noticed a familiar smell.
Dead poo smells just like real live poo.