Saw

 

 

When I was in PT school in the Philippines, I was roommates with a bunch of guys who were all studying to become engineers.  I was the odd one out because the field I was trying to be good at was totally way out of their comfort zones. 

You can actually see the stark difference in our lifestyles (by lifestyle, I mean the educational path we decided to take) through the mere clothing that we wore for school.  They did not have any uniform and I had to don a white top and white pants to mirror that I was in the medical field. 

Although we were different in so many ways, we shared a lot of interests- from the TV sitcom Friends and to the excitement we feel every time we take the public transport on a Friday night on our way to our hometowns.  We also shared the usual difficult struggles of collegiate Manila life- eating Lucky Me Pancit Canton for breakfast almost every day, the hesitations of cleaning up after making a mess and the exhaustive ritual of washing clothes by ourselves- starting from finding a good schedule for water supply to hunting for hangers around the house so we can dry up clothes (since washer and dryer units are not really a thing back then).  Eventually, my white school get-up soon faded in an ashy gray color because of the contaminated water of the Manila that I used for washing after three long years of laundry. 

 

During the initial years of my university life, my academic studies were very straight-forward, at least for me.  But every time I would sit down in our common room- which was the kitchen with a folding table- and whip out an anatomy book against the backdrop of calculators and mathematical formulas of my roommates, they would just be stunned in silence at the sight of the illustrations that decorated my reading material.  It was like they were seeing a porn magazine, not in the intended way they wanted to see it.  Of course, the first impulse was to peruse over the reproductive system.  Not that there was something very arousing to be discovered, but come on, we were young men in Freud’s most phallic stage.  You get the gist.      

 

Eventually, the pictures proceeded to actual specimens, which freaked them out in exponential stages.  The very first live (well by that time, they were dead) species I brought home was a frog, which I skinned at our zoology lab class.  I felt very Hannibal Lecter in their presence but at the same time, there was this   Barnum and Bailey vibe because it felt like I carried the circus to town:  they were blown away by the things that I dissected and poked into the poor frog’s dead body. I became the source of their entertainment, and an uncomfortable but diverting break in their monotonous mathematical life.   In a way, I had this power over them because I have placed them in a hypnotic and biological trance.  Who wouldn’t be?  After eight hours of problem solving, numbers and theorems, I would have vomited blood on any orifice in my body.  Plus they got to have the bragging rights of telling the tale of their roommate studying to become a physical therapist whilst bringing home a bunch load of science crap from the school lab, which was pretty ordinary for me by the time I reached my 4^th year in college. 

 

Eventually, the species I brought home evolved from a hand-held creature to a size of an infant, from an amphibian to a mammal. 

I took home a cat. 

I remember looking from the second floor balcony down into the flag pole area of the University when the merchants of the “bio-cats” came to deliver the goods to the school.  They were just dumping probably a hundred felines, frozen to death by formaldehyde, into the ground while the students of the campus stared in amazement.  Just to remind you, I was studying at a public university and the least of their concern at that time was decorum, sanitation or humanness for the deed. 

Anyway, I carried my cat specimen in a black bag, as if I was carrying a musical instrument.  Although my instrument reeked with chemical odor from the preservative. 

I did not bother taking Muning out of the bag for fear that my roommates’ reaction to the presence of a dead feline in the house could create an unnecessary ruckus.  I left him in the balcony.  Of course, they suspected that the bag contained something exciting so eventually, I had to give in and humor their curiosity by showing what’s inside the bag.    

Their reaction was priceless.  I wish I could have captured their half-amazement-half revulsion at the sight of a dead cat- with its mouth open, arms and legs in extension, and stench with an exclamation point as an afterthought.

They did not have dinner that night.  I had pizza. 

 

 Somehow, I think they were preparing themselves of what would eventually come after the cat.  Nothing could top that (well probably, an elephant, a whale or a human being.  But that was kind of a stretch.  It’s hard to put any of these inside a bag and carry it casually without being questioned by authorities).  However, I was not done shocking them. 

 

As our final exam for the lab during my cat phase, we had to extract the brain and spinal cord of the specimen in one piece and put it in a jar with formaldehyde.  The technique to achieving this was to soak the skull and the vertebra into a vinegar solution to soften the bone.  Then use a good mini-saw, scalpel, maybe a box cutter, a pair of scissors, forceps, toothpick, perhaps a fork or a nail file (because believe me, I used anything I could grab from the kitchen just to be successful at the task) and a very delicate and controlled manual force to achieve the perfect extraction of the nervous system.  Mine came out lumpy with the cord dissected at the upper lumbar level.  I was not able to save the lowest part because the nerves were all tangled.  I had a mediocre grade.  My classmates were smart enough to buy a pre-extracted brain and spinal cord in a specially prepared jar at some random store in Recto Avenue, then slapped their name on the container.  But where was the fun in that?  They did not get to have the chance to watch the fascination of a live-viewing audience.  At least I did. 

 

Now the clincher to the story happened when I was in PT school proper. 

Since I was studying at a public university with scarce funds for the allied medical professional- i.e. non-doctors, we shared cadavers and anatomical parts with the College of Medicine.  We were not given the priority for the first-rate educational experience since our college has yet to prove its worth at the national level through the board exams.   Once our department has showed that it could make waves the same way the medical students did, then probably we would have our own cadavers, but for now, we were renters. 

 

If you were thinking that I eventually brought home a cadaver.  You were wrong.  But partially right. 

I took home a human brain.  Let me explain. 

 

The nervous system is a very complex subject.  I have a love-hate relationship with it depending on the weather forecast.  But it’s mostly hate.  (Now with Math, I have a Hate-Hate relationship with it, but that is beyond the point). 

And the real human brain, outside the book, looks very different upon visual inspection.  You can hardly tell the difference from one part to the next. 

Our lab exam required identifying parts and determining its function under time constraints.  I swear, one of the proctors literally enjoyed banging the bell to tell us that time was up and we should move on to the next station and answer the next question.  She banged it while shouting the words, “MOVE!”, which sounded to me like, “F%*@ you, you will all fail so better get going!”  To which, we shuddered and just answer the first word that came to our minds, which for me usually was basal ganglia.  I should at least get a point if I answered that consistently throughout the test. 

By the way, I despised that form of exam.  I did not do very well under pressure, because I would always fail and then take removal exams.  Well, the correct sequence would be, fail the test, wet my pants, then take the removal exams. 

Anywho, my friends and I were desperate in ace-ing the test because it was our last ditch effort to save our assess from failing Anatomy Lab.  So we decided to “borrow” the brain to study on our own.  I am using the term borrow here very loosely.  But to our defense, we returned it in its original state. 

How, or the better question was, where could we go so that we could expose the brain and study it ourselves without causing a scene?  Remember, the specimen had an unusual odor because of the solution it was soaked in.  Nobody volunteered their home for the study group.  We ended up finding a secluded portion in the historic Intramuros, which was a blocks away from our school and spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening identifying the gray from white matter (which all looked white, if you asked me). 

We, as usual, started and ended the study group with a prayer in respect for our specimen.  And just to let you know, our intentions were pure and we treated the brain with reverence because we were well aware that this was once a real person who walked among us. 

 

When it was time for us to wrap up the session, nobody volunteered to take it home.  Number one, it was in a semi-transparent container (which used to be the vessel for a gallon of Lady’s Choice Mayonnaise) and number two, it was a human brain, forchrissakes. 

We ended up evaluating our options and deliberating who was the most appropriate person to take care of the body part.  And since I lived near the University and I did not have any family at home, and I was the more religious among the group, they unanimously forced me to be the guardian of the brain. 

 

Once I got back to my dorm (we called it boarding house, but it was a far cry from a boarding school that Americans are used to), I tried my best to conceal the specimen by covering it with more bags.  I placed it close to my bed, and since it was a bulky container, it automatically called everybody’s attention, like Alice’s candy in Wonderland: “open me”, which one of my roommates obliged, to his utter horror.  I spent the rest of my waking hour apologizing to them and explaining the reason for the presence of a human brain at home. 

I think that evening was the culmination of all my science shenanigans in my dorm.  I did not dare take home any other species after that for fear of being ostracized and voted off from the Big Brother house. 

My roommates did not sleep that night.  I slept unperturbed, but had a nightmare of failing the lab with the sound of the bell announcing my execution while I wet my pants.    

 

 

September 1, 2020