Latest update November 8th, 2024 1:00 AM
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Aspiring doctors tour Lyken morgue
Some first year medical students of the University of Guyana (UG), were yesterday given a close-up of some of the processes used by funeral homes to carry out the cleansing, embalming and other preparation of corpses.
Some of the aspiring doctors pose for a photo with Gordon Lyken (left) and Dr Dawn Stewart (right) after the tour of the morgue.
The students, who appeared on edge at first, quickly relaxed after they came face to face with a fresh corpse at the Lyken Newburg Funeral Home in Norton Street, Georgetown.
Unfortunately though, only one of them is inclined to pursue a career in pathology, a branch of medical science primarily concerning the examination of organs, tissues, and bodily fluids in order to make a diagnosis of disease that caused death.
Conducting the tour were representatives of the funeral home including Dr. Dawn Stewart who explained to the students the basic procedures.
Both Dr Stewart and her husband Gordon Lyken are trained in the art of embalming.
An embalming demonstration was done later that morning. The student doctors were also offered a closer view of the refrigeration compartment.
Dr. Stewart, who served as an Air Force Nurse in the United States Army, was also able to provide some tips to the students on the handling and the storage of the bodies.
She was able to shed some light on protective measures that should be taken, along with the do’s and don’ts in operating in such an environment.
Sharice Rahat who wants to pursue a career in pathology found the tour very interesting.
She was in no way taken aback by the sight of some of the charred bodies from the unrest at the Georgetown Prisons.
“My mom was a nurse and she is accustomed to those things. Sometimes she would go to the morgue and I would go with her,” the budding Pathologist told Kaieteur News.
But what led her to choose to pathology, an area in medicine that is in desperate need of expertise in Guyana?
She had an interesting response. “I can’t deal with someone dying on me, so I decided well I’ll deal with someone that is already dead,” she said, eliciting much laughter from her colleagues.
But apart from that, she explained that this aspect of science is very interesting, since it involves a lot of medical investigation and since she is a great fan of television shows like law and order and CSI, Pathology grabbed her interest.
“I decided to become a pathologist since I was in form one. At that time I did not know that Guyana was lacking in the field but as I grew older and I became informed and that made me more excited to be not the only one, but someone to start a trend that maybe more persons would want to come into the field,” Rahat said.
She said that looking at the bodies did not affect her at all. “It’s what I expected to see.”
Not so for some of her colleagues.
Rehana Fareed was not too excited by the sight of dead bodies lying on the tiled slab or in the freezers.
“I expected this but it was a bit gruesome,” she said, making it clear that that was not the field of medicine she wanted to be a part of.
“I prefer to deal with the living, saving lives. But as a doctor you will have to deal with things like this,” Fareed told this newspaper.
Another young aspiring doctor, Nicolas Elliott, was impressed with the manner in which the corpses were kept.
He said that the morgue tour will certainly be of assistance to him in his future studies.
“You know now that people die and you know that when they die they are not just thrown aside, that their bodies are still taken care of properly and Science goes on,” Elliott said.
This was the first time that local medical students visited the Lyken Funeral Parlour Morgue as part of their medical programme.
According to Gordon Lyken, the students were apprehensive at first but they soon became very interested once the tour began.
“I was joking around at first, asking them if they wanted gloves. I was surprised when all of them said yes and I had to go and get a box of gloves for them. They had never touched a dead body before,” Lyken told this newspaper.
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