Here in MA, auto repair shops are obligated to give you parts (like starters, alternators, etc.), which they replace in the course of fixing your car. So, do hospitals have to do the same? Can you request your removed tonsils, appendix, gall bladders, etc.? 
I had my gall bladder removed 2 years ago. I specifically requested it as a souvenier, and was refused. It’s a “biological hazard”.
What? It’s my gall bladder - how can it be hazardous to me? I guess they were afraid it would turn into the Gall Bladder That Ate Houston, or something.
:mad:
So, just put it into one of those biohazard bags, and you’re good to go…
In truth I expect this is somehow related to the idea that people might have a hospital remove their organ and then if given to them, the person could sell it on the black market.
– IG
Isn’t that why you had it removed in the first place?
Don’t some religions require removed organs and limbs be kept so they can be intered with the patient upon death? Also does one actually own one’s own body parts?
Still, black market or not, I grew it and nurtured it… I should be able to keep my own body parts! I wonder if they would agree if there was some way you could seal it in a glass jar and promise to never unleash it as a form of biological warfare.
Three of the seven screws were removed from my right leg. I asked for them, and after a quick autoclave, got the shiny titanium pieces to take home.
they gave me my gallstone, didn’t even have to ask
Heck, I carry my lunch around in those. It’s fun to watch the people’s faces on the bus…
With the autopsies I witnessed during my pathology rotation (medical technologist internship), none of the organs were put back with the body. They were removed, weighed, and examined, and small samples were taken for microscopic analysis. The rest of the organs were put into formalin and kept for a period of time in case more analysis needed to be done. This was at a children’s hospital, however, so the organs were very small (most autopsies there were for stillborn infants). I can’t say what generally happens with adult autopsy material, but was told (no cite, it was a friend interning at another hospital) that if the religion requires it, the organs, minus the samples taken for analysis, are returned to the body for burial.
How exactly would you keep your infected gallbladder functional long enough to sell it on the bad gallbladder black market?
The hospitals around here don’t like to do it, but if you press the issue, they’ll give you all the parts except what they send to pathology or use in the surgery (like my son couldn’t get the rib they removed, because they used it for bone grafts on his spine.) I suspect they don’t like to do it because it’s one more pain in the ass thing they have to deal with in the OR, when they’d rather focus on doing the surgery.
I had one try the “medical waste” line on me when I was advocating for a friend who wanted her gall bladder. I simply asked for the applicable laws and hospital policies in writing, and no one was able to give them to me. I then suggested my friend (the patient) might want to call the police and file a report for theft.
She got the gall bladder, in a jar of preservative.
Like ToB’s its totally useless. Perhaps you could have it cremated and keep the ashes, what there are of them, as a souvenir.
Alternatively they could pickle it in formaldehyde but then that would be the biohazard.
I think that a hospital will send a amputated limb to either a funeral home or someplace where it can be stored, so that it may be buried with its owner.
It is a dangerous practice because every fixative agent is in someway harmful. If bacteria can’t live in it, you can’t either.
From the MSDS for formaldehyde:
" Causes burns. Very toxic by inhalation, ingestion and through skin absorption. Readily absorbed through skin. Probable human carcinogen. Mutagen. May cause damage to kidneys. May cause allergic reactions. May cause sensitisation. May cause heritable genetic damage. Lachrymator at levels from less than 20 ppm upwards. Very destructive of mucous membranes and upper respiratory tract, eyes and skin."
Yeah, me too. But that’s just a hunk of calcium and cholesterol or somesuch. I occasionally find them in their little bottle and think “why am I keeping these?” before putting them back wherever I found them.
The gall bladder itself, though, wasn’t offered (nor would it even have occurred to me to want it.)
Hospital pathologist weighing in here.
The law is going to vary place to place, but generally if you want a removed body part badly enough and it can be given to you safely, my experience is that the hospital will comply. Once in training we had a woman come by after her hysterectomy and request her uterus, as she planned to bury it in the yard (don’t ask me why). A very few (thankfully) women think it is medically advisable, or honors Mother Gaia or something to eat their placentas after birth, about which my considered medical opinion is, Yurrrrgh. Hospital pathology departments routinely turn over gall stones and medical hardware, which can be easily washed and given to you in a container.
It’s more problematic for large organs, which as threemae notes have been preserved in formalin, which is a fairly nasty chemical as far as stink and as a potential carcinogen. Also, these organs have been dissected and are not exactly in prime condition to be stuffed and displayed on the mantle, should you be so inclined. At our hospital we keep “wet tissue” (i.e. organs and parts of same) in storage for a set period of time, generally two weeks after the pathology case report has been finalized. The tissue blocks (small pieces embedded in paraffin and used for cutting sections to be placed on glass slides and stained) are retained for a much longer period (years) and I believe there is a general right for you to take those into your custody (typically at your signed request we send them or unstained slides made from them to whichever institution you want to review your pathology results).
This thread reminds me of a Union Army general, Dan Sickles, who lost a leg at Gettysburg and had it pickled in alcohol and displayed in a museum. He used to go visit it in later years. He was a mite strange (there’s a new book out about him that includes a mysterious murder case).
Jackmannii, M.D.
I kind of wish I’d had my uterus returned to me after the hysterectomy. I would dance around it and tell it that it wasn’t in charge of me any more. Then I’d stomp on it several times. Then, and only then, I’d bury it in the yard. No, I did not have a good relationship with my uterus. As for eating the placenta, my nonmedical opinion is alsu Yurrrrgh. And also hork.
Do they also require all the trimmed hair, lost skin flakes, booggers, spits, blood on used band-aids and the rest?
After all that, you’re lucky they where that nice about it. If I where the doctor and really wanted to ‘get back at you’ I’d hand it to you in a plastic bag…no preservative.
My late mother-in-law had one of my husband’s baby teeth set in gold and wore it as one of the charms on a charm bracelet. I own the bracelet now and one time I showed it to my dentist. He said that it wouldn’t be allowed these days and that he never gives removed teeth back to the patient. They are considered biohazardous materials.