Please Help! Daughter fainted at sight of fetal pig.

<p>OK, I’m hoping that the wise parents on CC can help me with this one. I am always so impressed with your sage advice to others. My daughter is a young sophomore at a rigorous school. She is taking an Advanced Biology class this year, having taken Honors Chemistry last year as a freshman. She loves science, and was considering it as a career, that is, until yesterday. For the last month or so, she has been dreading the “fetal pig dissection” unit. She is very squeamish anyway, and this year at home refuses to cut her own meat or look at raw meat in the refrigerator. However, she does still eat cooked meat that has been cut up for her. Yesterday, when she was presented with her “fetal pig”, she cried, hyperventilated and passed out and had to be treated by the school nurse. She is otherwise normal- social, lots of friends, straight A’s. Somewhat dramatic, but the nurse felt that her uncontrollable shaking was not just drama. Unfortunately, this is what they’re going to be doing in class until the end of the year. The advice I need is this: Is this behavior normal, or should I have her see the school counselor? Is there such a thing as a plastic fetal pig that she could study as an alternative? Anyone out there have any great ideas, suggestions, experiences? The teacher seemed somewhat exasperated, but was going to talk with her today. Please share your wisdom! Thanks!</p>

<p>Tough spot to be in. I am going to be honest, still cuting her meat for her as a sophomore didn’t help any. The uncontrollable shaking, and the passing out were autonomic responses. While some of it was drama, some was not. I do think counseling will help. I know of no plastic pig as an alternative. I had a very squeamish DD, but told her that when they got to the cat dissection, she would just have to find a way. I was surprised to find that it has been going better than expected. I am sure others will chime in on how their kids handled it or other alternatives.</p>

<p>Some people are just like that, I guess. I remember having to dissect a frog by myself in high school because the girl I was paired with refused to touch it.</p>

<p>She’s going to have to calm her fears about it though to get through it, if they’re working on pigs for the rest of the year. I think maybe she’s psyched herself up to dread it, and she’s going to have to try to look at it like it’s not an animal. I can’t see a bio teacher completely cutting her slack, unless he/she would let someone else dissect and pin it for her to see the organs, etc., which I don’t think is entirely fair to all the other kids. Is it the whole matter of touching it, or is it cutting into it, or something else? Can she wear gloves? Maybe if she wears 2 pairs she won’t feel so grossed out about touching it.</p>

<p>I guess I’m kind of peculiar because I love dissecting things, but am pretty close to being vegetarian. The meat in the grocery store kind of grosses me out - I think it’s because it’s so disembodied and weird looking…only rarely will I eat or touch (fully cooked and prepared) meat. But I like cutting animals open and looking at their organs…</p>

<p>There are different issues involved. First is her extreme reaction to dissection. She should be followed up by a physician and/or a mental health specialist.</p>

<p>Second is the dissection. There are many students who object to dissection (and especially to vivisection). Computer-aided dissection lessons have been developed for them. If you google, you will find a number of resources which you could bring to the attention of the school.</p>

<p>Bio,
Is this (being able to tolerate dissection) something that your daughter would like to master? Is it something she just wants to avoid? Suggestions for next steps would vary depending on where her motivation lies.</p>

<p>I suggest having her checked for neurocardiogenicsncope, a nonfatal syndrome that causes sudden low blood pressure that can result in fainting under the circumstances that you describe. </p>

<p>Here’s a link to information: <a href=“http://www.dinet.org/NCS/ncs.htm[/url]”>http://www.dinet.org/NCS/ncs.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>It is not anything that’s dangerous except for the possibility that one could seriously injure oneself while fainting.</p>

<p>Most people who have it don’t realize they have it. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago. One can be given a medication to keep from fainting or one can simply do things like avoid situations leading to fainting, and also drink lots of fluids and use lots of salt to keep one’s blood pressure up.</p>

<p>This also tends to run in families, and usually isn’t diagnosed. Most people who have it think that everyone gets lightheaded at the sight of blood, while standing in high places, or while standing for a long time or after exercisign, so the people who have it don’t realize that they have a medical problem.</p>

<p>My IB Biology teacher let me write a paper instead of dissecting an eye last year (I’m vegan), but that was a relatively minor part of the curriculum, so I don’t know if anything similar could be arranged in your daughter’s case. If not, I found this through Google: [The</a> Virtual Fetal Pig Dissection](<a href=“http://www.whitman.edu/biology/vpd/"]The”>Virtual Pig Dissection). I don’t know if it’s detailed enough for the class, but if it is, maybe that could be a compromise?</p>

<p>Thanks everyone, for your input. As of last night, she wanted nothing more to do with any of it. I’m hoping that the teacher today was skilled enough to persuade her to try again, or come up with an alternative. In general, she loves science experiments and laboratory equipment.</p>

<p>She is very squeamish anyway, and this year at home refuses to cut her own meat or look at raw meat in the refrigerator.</p>

<p>hmm
yes I can see how dissection would be a problem</p>

<p>I am thinking that perhaps the teacher has an alternate plan?</p>

<p>I am not sure how much dissecting my kids did in high school, that sort of thing is expensive and the formalin stinks.</p>

<p>( I take that back- D#2 did dissect quite a bit of marine life in marine biology- of course when she was 4, she tore apart smelts that were being used for fishing bait with her bare hands because she was curious as to how they were made- then she put all their little heads on the ends of her fingers and waggled them at me !)</p>

<p>There may be computer dissection programs taht she could use instead.
I am sure this isn’t the first time this problem has come up-
has the teacher suggested anything?</p>

<p>a lot of people get really squeamish/freaked out over dissections. i’m big with animal rights, so i dont believe in live dissection anyways, but most schools should provide an alternative (you cant force a high school student to dissect an animal). this can be an online module or a tangible model.</p>

<p>Last year my D’s class actually had to dissect kittens!!! ( I believe they were fetal as well, but she still said it was clearly a kitten) As a cat lover and owner of 4 cats she just could not bring herself to do it. She got physically ill just thinking about it. She asked the teacher if she could do a virtual dissection instead and he allowed her. She was given a pass to the library each class period to work on it and study ( and not have to be in the room with the actual specimens) and she was able to pass the tests fine. Of course, she wasn’t planning to major in science or anything so it was a one-time issue. I am not sure what she would have done if it was something that would have come up again.
Also, I am not sure if this is true, but someone told her that it is a state law that they have to give an alternate assignment w/o penalty. It wasn’t an issue, the teacher was very nice about it, but it may help others to look into that where they live.
I really don’t see why it is still done in high school when there are virtual alternatives.</p>

<p>There are future physicians who faint at the sight of their first cadaver, and nurses who faint the first time they draw blood. Do not necessarily assume that the first sign of squeamishness, even when extreme, will carry over into future adventures.</p>

<p>Ethical issues are another matter.</p>

<p>If this is important to her and she wants to continue with science, I believe she would benefit from seeing a therapist for several sessions. Find a therapist who deals with phobias, and pretty soon she’ll probably get over it. Therapy will likely involve dealing head on with the things she’s scared of, but it’s normally very effective, in my understanding. Fainting isn’t that uncommon with hyperventilation; she wouldn’t have been getting proper oxygen. Someone should have gotten her to control her breathing or given her a bag to breathe into. It sounds like she had a panic attack, to me.</p>

<p>OK! This is all good input. Apparently today was not much better, although she did look at the work her partner did yesterday, she was too shaky to do much else. We have an appointment with the pediatrician on Friday (a very nice and down to earth woman) to look into the fainting aspect.</p>

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<p>I agree. I saw a classmate go down hard. But in med school or nursing school, there is really no way around the eventual dissection of a cadaver and venipuncture. Computer simulation will only take you so far. But through counseling/therapy and desensitization it can be overcome.</p>

<p>To add to what mini said, being very squeamish about dissection doesn’t always carry over, nor would it spell disaster for an aspiring scientist.</p>

<p>I remember being very upset about having to dissect animals in high school – no fainting or anything, but I do remember being sick to my stomach. Nine years later, as a first-year graduate student in biology, I have to dissect mice on a regular basis, and it doesn’t bother me very much at all anymore. I don’t like it, but I can do it.</p>

<p>I didn’t do the fetal pig dissection for personal beliefs (I’m a vegan) and I told my teacher and did a free virtual dissection online. In looking for websites I saw a site that loaned free CDs for virtual dissections too, and maybe those were more advanced. I refused to even watch, it upset me too much, especially since people were fooling around. </p>

<p>In many states there are laws in which students can’t be forced into doing a dissection if they for some reason object, and by law the teacher must be responsible to have an alternative and not hold it against the student. I had no problem and it was our biggest lab and our final.</p>

<p>I Remember the fetal pig dissection didnt faint but completely grossed me out and it didnt help that it smelt horribly…i hope ur daughter does fine…</p>

<p>nieghbor oncologist (a top doc in SoCal) can’t stand the sight of blood (also fainted in HS), and never stays in a room when its being drawn, so all is not lost for a science career.</p>

<p>Your d may well phase out of this…it’s all about becoming desensitized and some people just take a little longer. So please do not let her give up on her goals. </p>

<p>My d is not squeamish about these things at all. (She says it’s a ‘gift’…sarcastically of course…lol!) She dissected a cat and a pig brain last year as a senior in high school and is working on a pig this year in Honors Bio at UNC. Last year, her teacher told me she was quite a sight with a Twix bar sticking out of the side of her mouth while making perfect cuts with some sort of bone saw to remove the top of the pig’s skull. Her partners were these big male athletes and they were squealing and covering their mouths and eyes through the whole thing. But, by the end of the school year, these guys were just as proficient with their dissections as anyone else. So people do get over it if they stick it out.</p>

<p>(HOWEVER, I do not think our cats ever ‘got over it’ when she brought the cat tray home to study for a practical. She kept the tray well hidden from them in the garage…but they somehow knew a ‘cat murder’ had taken place. They were extremely freaked out.)</p>