dressing as big as a gas cap covered a pressure sore.
Once the sores heal, he said, he wants to try skydiving, horseback riding, calf roping. He wants to act in zombie movies and wrestle alligators. For some reason, it was the next one that made me go gooey: “I want to see Paris.” To this day, when I think of Mark, I picture him, cigarette behind one ear, rolling way too fast down Boulevard Saint-Germain.
As I write this, there’s been chatter in the media about the ultimate composite-tissue transplant: a whole body. If it were possible to regrow spinal nerves, you could, in theory, sever a soldier’s head from his severely mangled body and surgically transplant it—hooking up the arteries, veins, and nerves—onto a freshly decapitated beating-heart cadaver whose tissues have been kept oxygenated via a respirator. A rough version of the procedure was performed by Cleveland surgeon Robert White in the 1960s, using pairs of rhesus monkeys. The heads with their new bodies survived for a few days, paralyzed and unable to breathe on their own. Then rejection issues set in. Vastly better immunosuppressant protocols have brought the whole Frankenstein tale closer to reality, though it still resides in the realm of speculation. Spinal nerves are far more complicated than peripheral nerves. Peripheral nerves, which serve the extremities, are like telephone wires in a sheath. When the wire is cut, the signal stops at that point. But if you reattach the axon it will regrow along the pathway of its sheath. With spinal nerves, the analogy is no longer telephone wires; now you’re cutting the wires in a sophisticated computer network. The nerves don’t know what they’re supposed to reconnect to, which way to regrow, what paths to follow to restore function. The optic nerve is similarly complex. That is one reason no one, not even Rick Redett, has successfully transplanted an eye. †
T HE THIN cadaver’s penis lies on the big cadaver’s belly while Cooney finishes isolating nerves and vessels on the stump. They’re not going to hook them up this time, because that takes six to ten hours, four to six surgeons, and a microscope on wheels. And was not the point of today’s endeavor.
When Cooney is done, Redett picks up the organ and drapes it in place over the larger cadaver’s stump. In the way a shopper previews the fit of a shirt by holding it to his shoulders, we have a sense of what this body would look like with the other’s penis. Redett steps away to get his camera. I am not preparing a presentation, but I, too, take some photographs. As though I could ever forget the sight.
Redett finishes and sets down his camera. He zips the big man’s body bag. It resembles a tuxedo bag and has a space for the cadaver’s name, which has been filled in with black marker. When I get back to my hotel, I find an online obituary for him. There are a number of interactive options. One of them causes me to make a strangled barking sound. “Please add a photo and share in the life story of ________.” Another option invites me to add a memory to the online guest book. “If you need help finding the right words, view our suggested entries.” Nothing seems to fit.
___________
* In the same way amputees feel phantom pain in the space where the arm or leg once resided, penile amputees sometimes feel phantom pleasure. This, and phantom erections, were first described by the coiner of the phrase “phantom limb,” Silas Weir Mitchell. What gave Mitchell his particular expertise? He worked with Civil War amputees at the “Stump Hospital” in downtown Philadelphia.
Oh, for the titular economy of yesteryear. The Stump Hospital is gone and in its place we have the likes of the Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence for Limb Loss Prevention and Prosthetic Engineering. Though all is not lost. We still have a Foot & Ankle Center in London, a Breast Clinic in New Delhi, a Kidney Hospital in Tehran, the Face & Mouth Hospital in Calcutta,
Once the sores heal, he said, he wants to try skydiving, horseback riding, calf roping. He wants to act in zombie movies and wrestle alligators. For some reason, it was the next one that made me go gooey: “I want to see Paris.” To this day, when I think of Mark, I picture him, cigarette behind one ear, rolling way too fast down Boulevard Saint-Germain.
As I write this, there’s been chatter in the media about the ultimate composite-tissue transplant: a whole body. If it were possible to regrow spinal nerves, you could, in theory, sever a soldier’s head from his severely mangled body and surgically transplant it—hooking up the arteries, veins, and nerves—onto a freshly decapitated beating-heart cadaver whose tissues have been kept oxygenated via a respirator. A rough version of the procedure was performed by Cleveland surgeon Robert White in the 1960s, using pairs of rhesus monkeys. The heads with their new bodies survived for a few days, paralyzed and unable to breathe on their own. Then rejection issues set in. Vastly better immunosuppressant protocols have brought the whole Frankenstein tale closer to reality, though it still resides in the realm of speculation. Spinal nerves are far more complicated than peripheral nerves. Peripheral nerves, which serve the extremities, are like telephone wires in a sheath. When the wire is cut, the signal stops at that point. But if you reattach the axon it will regrow along the pathway of its sheath. With spinal nerves, the analogy is no longer telephone wires; now you’re cutting the wires in a sophisticated computer network. The nerves don’t know what they’re supposed to reconnect to, which way to regrow, what paths to follow to restore function. The optic nerve is similarly complex. That is one reason no one, not even Rick Redett, has successfully transplanted an eye. †
T HE THIN cadaver’s penis lies on the big cadaver’s belly while Cooney finishes isolating nerves and vessels on the stump. They’re not going to hook them up this time, because that takes six to ten hours, four to six surgeons, and a microscope on wheels. And was not the point of today’s endeavor.
When Cooney is done, Redett picks up the organ and drapes it in place over the larger cadaver’s stump. In the way a shopper previews the fit of a shirt by holding it to his shoulders, we have a sense of what this body would look like with the other’s penis. Redett steps away to get his camera. I am not preparing a presentation, but I, too, take some photographs. As though I could ever forget the sight.
Redett finishes and sets down his camera. He zips the big man’s body bag. It resembles a tuxedo bag and has a space for the cadaver’s name, which has been filled in with black marker. When I get back to my hotel, I find an online obituary for him. There are a number of interactive options. One of them causes me to make a strangled barking sound. “Please add a photo and share in the life story of ________.” Another option invites me to add a memory to the online guest book. “If you need help finding the right words, view our suggested entries.” Nothing seems to fit.
___________
* In the same way amputees feel phantom pain in the space where the arm or leg once resided, penile amputees sometimes feel phantom pleasure. This, and phantom erections, were first described by the coiner of the phrase “phantom limb,” Silas Weir Mitchell. What gave Mitchell his particular expertise? He worked with Civil War amputees at the “Stump Hospital” in downtown Philadelphia.
Oh, for the titular economy of yesteryear. The Stump Hospital is gone and in its place we have the likes of the Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence for Limb Loss Prevention and Prosthetic Engineering. Though all is not lost. We still have a Foot & Ankle Center in London, a Breast Clinic in New Delhi, a Kidney Hospital in Tehran, the Face & Mouth Hospital in Calcutta,
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