I’m no one official, but it seems to me that your expertise would certainly qualify you to write a staff report. As for your concerns about lacking the “Doper quality to survive,” you might be happy if you posted only in the General Questions forum. Some people prefer to stay out of the Pit or Great Debates.
It’s a ton of school. High school, college pre-med (I messed around with other majors in college and ended up spending five years there, then two years doing other things before I got into med school), four years of med school, four years of residency, a year of fellowship in forensic pathology, then you got to take your boards and get a real job. By the way, they start paying you after med school, but the starting salary is about 30K for 60 hours a week. Was 27k for 90 hours a week when I started… two years before Libby Zion died… sure QtM knows what I mean.
There are other ways to have fun with dead bodies without going through thirteen years of post high school training. Forensic tech for the cops. Forensic tech for us (very interesting job, horribly underpaid). Police officer. Forensic anthropology - ah, the field I would have married if I didn’t marry the field I did - you gots to get a PhD, but at least no med school. Lotsa stuff.
If you do go to med school, meet your dead body on your first day. Hello, cadaver. Ugh. You smell of crock-juice (formaldehyde etc).
Dealing with sick people is in some ways tougher than dealing with dead people. Dead people don’t complain.
I’m no one official, and I’m not sure you’re right.
I’m sure you’re right.
And I had lunch with the Poster Known as Twickster yesterday…
See what benefits being a Doper can bring you 
Seriously, stick around if you can. I certainly don’t post much, but no one seems to mind
Gasp!
We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!
Wow. Do you get emotionally involved very often (no, I didn’t mean romantically, you sick fucks). I’m sure you build up a wall after a while…but does it get to you sometimes?
I agree with Kalhoun and Dewey Finn on both of their points.
Even though I’m 24 and I know a lot about a lot of crap, I want to know about everything. Every little bit helps.
It’s how Ben Franklin got his education (part of it, at least). His father would invite a different professional to dinner every night. The father and the guest would talk shop during dinner and the kids would learn bits here and there.
That’s what I consider the Dope. It puts me in touch with people that I’d never have access to on a very personal, yet professional, level. Hell, I cut my teeth in Great Debates when it came to the Dope. Much learning and debate done in there. Politics gets in the way a lot, but I like politics.
This all comes back to you, though. With your expertise, you help make us smarter and better. Everyone’s igorance is fought, then.
Emotionally, what type of cases are the harder to handle? Or are they all just as tough to swallow?
And please stay, I’ll pay for your membership. I am a HUGE fan of forensic shows (preferably of the “real life” type).
I don’t get romantically involved with … Hey, I’m not going there. Just not going there.
I have a huge wall that protects me from most things. When something breaches that wall, it’s bad. Child abuse sometimes breaches it; the result is anger, but I can control it and I can still do my job scientifically and professionally. Real horrible things that humans do to other humans while they are alive, followed by their death, sometimes breaches it; the result is worse than anger, sort of a sick despair and weakness that interferes with doing the job.
Things that humans do to other humans after the victims are dead don’t get to me. Cut off the hands and feet, I’m okay with that, so long as the victim was dead first. Also, smells don’t get to me unless they are so bad that you don’t want to think about how bad that is.
I had a real horrible case in Memphis many years ago that really got to me. I came in late to work the next day (unlike me). A white haired county sheriff was standing there, waiting to talk to me. I apologized for being late, but said with a tremor that the case the day before had been so awful that I had had to go out and get drunk last night.
He looked me right in the eye and said in that Tennessee rural drawl that is so effective with satire and humor, “I know just what you mean. Just in case, I go out and git drunk every night.”
I laughed so hard at myself I quit feeling pity party for poor me. (Hey, she’s the victim, I didn’t suffer.)
I think our gross and twisted humor does a lot to protect us from having it get to us.
Child abuse.
I was well taught by - wait - I can’t say people’s names, right? Anyway, she was a senior fellow when I was a junior fellow in NYC at the Manhattan OCME. One week she was swearing because the fourth beaten and shaken baby had come in over ten days, and she had done the first three, and she was saying, “I can’t do another one. I won’t. I’m not gonna. It’s not fair to me.”
She got someone else to do it.
Then she taught me on my first one how to butterfly the ribs to look for intercostal hemorrhages. She was good. I mean, gooood.
I think she’s a chief somewhere now.
Child abuse is probably the roughest.
I got the money, thanks so much for your - um - butter. I just don’t got the time at home, or the right at work.
Well, if my very existence is so awe-inspiring – how about I make it a direct order that you join? Think of the sig line you could have!
(Abashed with too much awe, slinks away from the Presence)
Butter! More butter!!
This woman needs a thorough butterin’, and by god, we’re not gonna stop butterin until she’s all slathered up and relents!
Oh, c’mon woman, stop playing hard to get. Don’t make us beg.
Please… Please, PLEASE!
Has anyone ever been buttered up to death? 
Have you read any of Patricia Cornwell’s novels, and if so, what do you think of them?
No, I don’t watch shows or read books about my profession - there don’t seem to be many about accountants (just jokes about how boring we are). But I seem to have a slight obsession with the whole murder genre, especially the psychological side of it (profiling, etc.).
And I really appreciate that you opened this thread, and wish you’d stay permanently, also.
I don’t watch any of the crime dramas on TV…I’m stuck to 24 and that’s it. You can pry it out of my cold dead hands…(heh!)
But I am absolutely fascinated with medical thrillers and true crime books. Everybody but my forensic anthropologist friend makes fun of me for being a little sick on that…but I digress.
What I came here to say was that I don’t normally get in on the oh please threads, but I’m telling you that you really ought to. Even if you do have VERY little time to contribute, we will be richer for your contribution. If it’s money, we got that covered. If you’re afraid you’ll get too involved, we will find a way to schedule an intervention. Just do it, ok? Thanks.
Patsy Cornwall got her first job in forensics from my chief, on whom Kay Scarpetta is loosely based.
Emotionally I think Kay is closer to Patsy than to my chief. My chief is gutsy as all gut buckets. And has been known to say she thinks senators give her money for her budget just to get her off the phone. And has an appetite for confrontation. And has a mean emphysematous laugh. Forty years in forensics and she can’t give up smoking the coffin nails.
I read some of the early ones, and damn the forensics was good and right, but the characters bothered me. All the minor characters were alive alive o, but the main character didn’t touch me. Weird.
The later ones just seem to get bizarrer and bizarrer; I haven’t dipped in.
Patsy did something administrative and then something investigative at the main office; she was never a forensic pathologist. She didn’t handle bodies. But she still gets the forensic stuff right. Got. Haven’t read them in years but would bet she still does.
Last Tango in Paris?
<snork>
All right, all right, people! If I were to give up the three hundred painfully acquired nickels and subscribe from home, how would I go about keeping my SD name Gabriela?
Has anybody ever signed off as a guest from one account, and tried to sign on as a paying member from another account with the guest name? How does one go about doing that? I cannot sign up from work.
You ever read the 500-plus brief replies to the descriptions of 24 on the Dave Barry Blog?
(uh - is it done to refer to other blogs on this the Almightiest of All Message Boards, particularly if the other blog is mere entertainment?)
His Daveness seems to unite a sincere addiction to 24 with a queasy disbelief in his own sincere addiction to 24.
Schedule the intervention now. Obviously.
Well, the local PathMark had a “buy-one get-one” sale on these massive tubs of Shedd’s Spread Country Crock this week. Now we’ve got about a year’s supply, so I could part with one of the tubs if it’ll get gabriela to stick around.
In other words: Join up, damnit!