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She wanted to keep that shiny silver half-circle. It helped her climb the Adirondacks and the foothills of Mount Rainer. It supported her as she strolled vineyards in Italy and hoisted her leg up rocks in Utah. So when a surgeon replaced Barbara Brotman’s decades-old hip ball, she asked for the old one back.
“I wanted to own it as a memento, as a connection to my surgeon who had died, who I felt I owed a great deal,” said Brotman, senior assistant director of development communications for University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, and a former Tribune columnist.
Brotman was only 17 when she smashed part of her pelvis during a trek through the Grand Canyon. The damage was severe, and she needed something artificial to put her back together. A person so young could retain mobility for longer with a partial, instead of a total, hip replacement, her doctor urged.
“It was a very hard operation to do. It failed frequently,” said Brotman. “He did it because of my age. He didn’t want me to have an operation every 10 years. It would have been a nightmare.”
That metal cap, which looks like a rounded cocktail glass that could fit in the palm of your hand, kept her biking, hiking and skiing for four decades, until she had a total hip replacement a few years ago. Although she thought her request to retain it might come across as unusual, Brotman said her surgeon was unfazed. All she had to do was sign some releases before her surgical souvenir was sterilized and presented to her “shiny as the day it was put in.”
While some states like Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi have legislation against owning human remains, there is no federal law against taking organs, tissue or devices home after surgery, though there are some limitations. If you’re getting something removed, here’s what you need to know if you want to hold onto it.
Who do you ask?
Everything goes through the pathology department, which your doctor can contact. The Chicago-area hospitals I talked to, including medical centers with Northwestern, Rush and the University of Chicago, said not a lot of people are clamoring for their medical leftovers, but you can ask.
Dr. Jon Lomasney, a pathologist and associate professor of pathology at Northwestern Medicine, told me that patients or families who have power of attorney or next of kin for the deceased can legally request the return of organs or devices, including pacemakers, defibrillators or a hip, like Brotman’s.
“We are obligated to make those available,” said Lomasney, who added that interested parties are informed of infectious hazards and must sign paperwork absolving the hospital of liability.
But there are some restrictions. You can’t leave with radioactive material or anything that would be an extreme risk to a patient or the public. Lomasney said that includes portions of the body infected with a hard-to-kill pathogen like Creutzfeldt-Jakob, Ebola or drug-resistant tuberculosis. There are some instances where public health authorities use special processes for handling and disposal that the general public couldn’t follow, he said.
Even if the tissue isn’t dangerous, not everything survives the scrutiny required for an adequate diagnosis. If you have a mole removed or a biopsy — like a lumpectomy for breast cancer — it’s usually not intact after the inspection. “Some things get sectioned like a loaf of bread,” said Lomasney. “The organ wouldn’t be recognizable if it’s a cyst or a kidney because it’s all chopped into pieces.”
If there is something left after pathology is finished, which can take weeks, then it’s all yours. Small body parts and tissue are “fixed” in a container filled with a combination of formaldehyde and water. Formalin is a toxic respiratory irritant and a possible carcinogen, Lomasney warned, so it has to be handled professionally. The mixture needs to be changed every decade or so, but it would preserve whatever is in it for more than a lifetime.
“The specimen would remain in pristine condition — as long as it’s kept in formalin — for centuries,” said Lomasney.
Devices need extra inspection
A colleague told Lomasney that a patient with cardiomyopathy, a disease that makes it hard to pump blood through the body, had a defibrillator turned into a keychain after receiving a heart transplant. The patient felt nostalgic for the mechanism that had been a lifesaver so many times before. Sometimes family members will ask for the return of a device after autopsy, he said. But before it can be taken home, anything electrical needs to be examined and permanently shut off.
“If a child were to play with it and it discharged, it could introduce a lethal arrhythmia,” said Lomasney. “It also has a lithium battery. If someone were to dispose of it in the fireplace, it could explode.”
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Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s policy is to send FDA-regulated devices — defibrillators, pacemakers, prosthetic valves, hips — back to the company that created them so they can evaluate the product for quality, safety and effectiveness. That’s the best way to make the next generation better, Lomasney said. Afterward, the patient or family member will get the apparatus safe, clean and “in a Tiffany-style box.”
“It is really important for the device to go to the manufacturer first,” said Lomasney. “It’s really a win-win for everybody.”
Why not keep it?
Saving something that came out of your body might seem strange, but my mother took a few gallstones for the road after doctors removed the organ that kept filling up with them. Brotman’s daughter, Nina Berman, had her wisdom tooth made into a necklace by a taxidermy friend who suspended it in gold-flaked glycerin inside an empty shot-gun shell.
“Honestly, it didn’t occur to me not to want it,” said Berman. “I already had a solid collection of bones, stones and pelts — plus a knife with a deer hoof as a handle, so of course I’d want my own tooth from my head.”
As for her mom, that metal hip was too important to discard. Even though Brotman couldn’t keep walking through forests or commuting to work with it, she still wanted it around. “I don’t have it on display because it feels a little gross, but I feel like it’s an important part of my personal history,” said Brotman. “I’m really grateful to it.”
Keri Wiginton is a freelance writer.
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