Lesson from Dissection

Dissection. It's not a class I enjoy. In fact, I rather squirm and occasionally cry while dissecting. It's hard for me to cut up a creature, no matter how much I dislike the creature while living.

So much for big tough Anna, huh? Or should I say "little tough Anna"?


Today's dissection was a frog. I've always liked frogs. I've even kissed several, but somehow princes were not meant for me. That's off topic anyhow. I told myself no tears. None.

Telling myself was unnecessary. It proved to be the most interesting yet most disturbing dissection I have ever seen or done. Alena and I just cut open the skin. All we should have been seeing was frog muscle, but what we did see was guts poking through a hole in the muscles. Weird, huh? Not weird enough yet. We cut through the muscles to see the organs. Indeed, the guts were still there. I looked at my papers to start identifying organs. Most of the organs were unidentifiable.

I am very good at identifying organs. Usually I can look at a paper and then at the dissection and just figure out which is what. It's not hard.

I will spare you details but after calling my mom over (who was basically a surgeon) and after her puzzling over for about 10 to 15 minutes, we figured out why the organs looked so mutated. The frog had cancer. It's heart was not shaped properly, it's intestines were numerous and everywhere, it's lungs were shrunk tiny-weeny, some of it's organs were vast beyond their normal size and other organs were completely missing. Gross, huh?

I asked mom why she thought it was cancer. She said "I've seen cancer in humans. That's what it looks like."

So there is a point to telling my reader all this. Why are we so afraid of cancer? Because it's real and it's scary. It is the revolt, or you could say, the falling of your body against itself. There is no cure. There is nothing that can stop it, save God alone.

But take comfort, we are the Children of God. And though we may fall asleep in death, we will be raised on the last day and be given eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.