An Organ Donor's Final Surgery

Surgeons have an intimate relationship with the human body, and particularly their patients' bodies. Their efforts are mainly to save their lives, but when a patient is dead, that relationship is broken. The surgeon can do nothing more for them. That was well understood until relatively recent medical breakthroughs made it necessary for dead patients to undergo surgery in order to donate their organs. An entirely new category of patient was designated for those who are brain dead, but their bodies must be kept going long enough to harvest those organs.

Author and anesthesiologist Ronald W. Dworkin takes us into that uncanny state as doctors attempt to slow the body's dying process and race to harvest organs that will be viable for saving other patients who need them. The procedures involved are unlike anything else those doctors do for their patients, and they are very aware of the gravity of the procedure, and how the body responds even when the mind is gone. They are also mindful of the deceased and the gift they are giving. Read about the overwhelming experience of performing exacting surgery on a somewhat functioning body with a dead brain at Aeon.  -via Nag on the Lake