Student Reflection

by Tim Redden On behalf of the first year class: Thank you! thank you for coming here today to this very special and important service. It gives us the occasion to express our appreciation for everything you have done to support your family members' or friends' decision to become donors. As a graduate student last year and as a medical student this year, I have had the unique opportunity to benefit twice from the exceptional program in anatomy here at Saint Louis University. I felt, therefore, all the more compelled to come before you today, more as a sign of gratitude than because I felt I anything original to say. What did occur to me as I tried nonetheless was that walking into the anatomy lab the first day of class, we students crossed a threshold. We took the first step towards becoming a physician: a healer. What strange irony, I thought, that this first endeavor presents us starkly with that which we will spend our lives trying , to stave off at every doorstep. Death is a harsh reality to accept, so we don't think about it. It is too emotionally difficult, so we put it out of our minds. In the lab, we remove from thought the person once incumbent in this body before us and study organs and tissues. One might say this is only normal, it allows us to proceed and spares us emotionally. We forget, on purpose, the mother, daughter, father, son or uncle or friend once alive in what we study. That they laughed and cried, brought joy to those around them. The time constraints of our study allows us to give only passing thought to the charity and humanity involved in their gift not just to us nor to the school of medicine, but to every patient we will care for each day in the future. It is a magnanimous gift of self and demonstrates a lesson in beneficence and trust that we are gathered here to commemorate. I enjoin my peers as I do myself: TO REMEMBER this gift, to understand each day its full reality and that of the person once alive in the bodies we study. This will help us to confront the more emotionally challenging aspects of medicine, instead of conditioning a reflex to subdue, ignore and, thus, neglect what is unpleasant, but often so crucial in getting to the root cause of patient problems. Let us not forget who our donors were and their family and friends here today, because every person we will care for in the future lives in the same social context and this context is an integral part of caring for them. Remember this gathering and let it inspire us to understand the intricate social web we live in. In doing so, we will become better care givers as the donors and their families sought and hope for us. Thank you all again.

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