Getting Organ-ized

In the past few days, I've devoted more thought to the dispersal of several of my internal body parts than any normal person should. Other than an organ donor, I mean. And even if you do choose to become an organ donor, you generally think of your body as one whole unit, as in "I am donating my organs...to somebody, maybe," rather than, "I think I'll donate my left eyeball to some guy in Dubuke who poked his out with a fork, and my liver could definitely do some good for someone who's had a few too many Jager shots at the old Chimneysweep."

Today I worked out the details of three body parts which will soon become separate from the rest of my self:

1. We registered at a cord blood bank, which stores and freezes blood from a baby's umbilical cord. There are public donation banks and private banks, and we're paying the fees to have the blood preserved privately -- that is, stored in giant freezers. It's not wacky like cryogenics, I swear. There are already proven uses for cord blood, in that it can be used to harvest healthy stem cells which could then be used to help family members with various medical conditions. The technology is still being developed, but as Scott pointed out when I hedged on the cost of collection and storage, "It's worth it to gamble on science." That was the right thing to say.

So there you go. I get a collection kit in the mail, which I then bring with me when I check into the hospital, and instead of being chucked in the garbage, my baby's umbilical cord may one day be capable of doing great things.

2. Let me just ask you a question. If you found yourself in possession of a spare placenta, what would you do with it? Would you take it home and toss it around like Laura and Mary Ingalls did with a pig bladder in "Little House on The Prairie"? Would you use it to play practical jokes on people? Would you save it for Halloween and then donate it to a local haunted house to be used as realistic guts?

Or, would you find someone willing to freeze-dry the thing and turn it into pills, which you could then take on a daily basis for aid in post-partum depression?

If you chose the fourth option, then you're me. This unusual detour into crunch-itude was brought to me by my sister-in-law, and my doctor thinks it might not be that bad an idea. Whether it does anything is completely unproven -- there's no scientific research either way. It's one of those anecdotal things, where women have been doing it for centuries and so some of them swear by it and blah, blah, blah, they say that about homeopathy too. In this case, there's actually some kind of legitimate theory behind the idea, which is that you're replenishing iron and hormones that have been depleted from your body through the process of delivering. At the very worst, it will do nothing at all and I'll have an interesting story to tell my grandkids.  

The only obstacle is for me to get past the idea of what I'll be putting in my mouth every day, and I figure if I've been able to swallow giant horse-pill-sized fish oil supplements for the past nine months, this should be a cakewalk.

3. Oh, I almost forgot the third item. The third item is a baby. Shut up, it's a body part! She's currently a part of my body, is she not? The third item is a baby, which we will be bringing home with us, very soon.