I have a job that would make the vast majority of the population balk. The less sturdy among us may faint. Even within my own workplace, common occurrences become sources of trauma for individuals of other departments.
Because darkest gods forbid someone with a weak stomach walk in while I’ve got a human leg on my table.
I work in a surgical pathology lab. Specifically, my job is to process whatever the surgeon takes out of you and put it in little boxes so that another department can slice it, put it on a slide, and send it to a pathologist for final diagnosis. Usually I get biopsies — amorphous pieces of human tissue preserved in formaldehyde or little tiny skin fragments to be inked and sliced as needed. The endless chain of biopsies tend to be punctuated by the occasional full organ — appendixes and gallbladders, sometimes a toe, sometimes a whole fucking limb.
This isn’t a job everyone can do, as I am well aware. And the actual dissection — pulling apart these specimens, seeing and understanding the disease processes at a macro level — is intensely enjoyable. I’m often commended for taking on complex specimens simply because I find them fascinating, they’re an opportunity to explore how things can go wrong within the human body. This doesn’t hurt the person — the leg is already gone, by the time I get the specimen, the person in question is already recuperating at home. Every specimen I process represents someone who is still alive.
My biggest issue with my job is not the gore, the stink, the chemicals, but the volume. It’s a job that’s demanding on the stomach, that requires a specific kind of person. One that isn’t quite common — which means that we do a lot of specimens in a day. If you’re quick, sometimes over 100 specimens in a single day. There’s no time to provide each one of them with the respect they deserve, no time to take note of the nuances. It turns into an assembly line wherein the only reprieve are the larger specimens — and those larger specimens become a burden when under intense time pressure.
I don’t think these patients benefit from their organs going into an assembly line. If I could, I’d give each one the care they deserve. Unfortunately, the nature of a for-profit medical system means that a person’s health is simply. Industrialized. At every level. Mine included.
from the pen of icarus blake 
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