Their skin tells quite a story
you've got bruises, you've got sun spots
you've got tattoos sometimes.
Tattoos are pretty exciting.
Today I learned all the blood vessels that went through the brain
and I saw them on a real brain, which is pretty cool.
The donors are amazing people, they really are.
They have a realisation that their world, their existence
is coming to an end.
And in some ways they use a combination of sadness and humour
to overcome that.
Who knows, they might find something outstandingly
interesting in this old thing.
As an ex-professor, I'd love to be a footnote.
Planning for death usually involves pondering
whether you’d prefer a burial or cremation.
But at universities across Australia
including here at the ANU
body donation programs are offering an alternative.
Today we are specifically looking at the circulation of the brain
and symptoms and signs of a stroke
so if a particular vessel in the brain gets secluded
what we'll be able to see as doctors.
These are second year medical students
and each week they have classes
where they examine and dissect
human bodies that have been donated to the school.
The texture, the feeling that you can get
from a real body, from a real human being
it's something you can't get from the models.
If you want to do some surgery
you have to anticipate possible changes
and the only way to do that is to use human bodies.
They need to handle and relate to them
the same way as they will do with their real life patients.
The ANU donation program
accepts about six new bodies each year.
Hannah Lewis is the person responsible for
receiving and processing them.
I think when people imagine what
an anatomical services specialist looks like
it's usually a middle aged man who's balding with glasses.
So when a donor passes away
their cadaver is collected by a funeral company
and the funeral company delivers it directly to me
within preferably 12 hours.
We embalm the body and then
that the body sits for about six months
until they're ready for sectioning
and once they've been sectioned
they're dissected by either myself
or students in the dissection program we run here.
We actually call all of our cadavers patients
because they're the first line for the students
in terms of their experience of patients.
I still remember my first dissection that I ever did
it was a forearm cut mid humerus
and the lady had pink nail polish
and just that association with being so human
it's in between human and object, it's in limbo.
When I'm around these patients it does feel like
they're somewhat present in a sense.
I often find myself saying things like
"Excuse me sir, I'm just going to lift your arm here," or
"Do you mind if I just grab this," or
"Please don't knock that over."
They're still a person to us.
While Hannah deals with the dead
Riccardo Natoli liaises with the living.
Some people really want to know everything, you know
"What's going to happen?"
"What classes am I going to be taught in?"
"I have this particular disease type, is that going to be studied?"
"Is that going to be looked at?"
And other people really want to keep it at a distance
"I'm donating, that's all I want to know, I don't really mind."
So my job is really to understand what the individual wants
and to provide them with that level of information.
Riccardo is also a researcher
focusing on vision and age-related
macular degeneration.
People talk about the eye as being sort of
the window to the soul
and while they're in the human they absolutely are
it's what allows you to perceive the world around you.
But as you transition from living to dying
it really at that point becomes
a window to the central nervous system
and how we can provide people with vision
for a longer period of time.
Virginia and Barry are really the essence of the types of donors
that actually donate to medical research.
And they see that providing their body as teaching specimens
or teaching tools is really the only way to advance
medical research, medical healthcare and research.
The body is empty, I mean, it’s mine, I’m dead, I’m gone
whatever it is, it’s an empty shell.
I found it very confronting
that to support him to do that would be for me
to take a different view of his death
which was, I found very difficult at the time.
It's not going to be easy when somebody dies.
But, we thought it would be a good idea
if we gave something back.
Considering that, I thought why shouldn't I do it as well?
What we do try and say it's really important
to let the next of kin know what your intentions are
when you die and open that conversation.
Body donation is one option.
I’m Liz McKenzie, I’m Virginia Hooker’s daughter
and Barry’s step daughter.
When I started to think about some of the more
confrontational aspects about what they might actually
be doing to the body
but then I thought well, of course you would naturally
feel that way about a body of a loved one
whether it was in the ground being eaten by worms or microbes
or whether it was being cremated and burned.
I really see it as another gift that they’re leaving behind.
If they can help somebody else save a life
well, that’s a great thing to do.
Death is not something we like to talk about
but actually it's what makes life really special.
If there wasn't an end, we would just take life for granted.
There's obviously a curiosity in me
but it's mostly about creating these teaching specimens
for students and also fulfilling these donors' wishes.
This is their dying wish
this is the last thing they wanted to contribute to this Earth
so I'm very honoured to be able to facilitate that.
Oh, amazing, the opportunities are endless.
Endless, totally endless.
I mean, alcohol abuse, tobacco abuse, I've had all that
so, God knows.