I meant <<snort>>.
Sorry, I’m a little drunk.
Do I testify in court?? Are you kidding? I can do “What is pathology / What is forensic pathology / What is an autopsy” in my sleep. Frequently do, according to Gabriela’s Trophy Husband.
The lawyer is going to see the CSI effect better than I am. You see, the lawyer sees the whole trial, including the conviction or lack thereof. By law, I can’t listen to anyone’s testimony before I testify, lest I be swayed. And I usually have too much to do to hang around afterwards. So all I hear is my piece.
But I hear about the CSI effect all the time from my friends. Also from families who ask me, on the day of the autopsy, “What did the tox show?” Hey, I’ll know in six to twelve weeks. You want faster results? Ante up a million or so dollars in higher income taxes.
GTH likes to point out that the budget for any episode of CSI is bigger than the budget of my entire office for a year.
Not to mention, they fantasize their results.
Aww, thanks, eleanorigby. Did we keep your face in a jar by the door?
I spent 4.5 years subordinate to the great J. T. Francisco. I cannot discuss O.C. Smith in public.
I may not have met your dad unless he worked for Baptist/the Med. Did he?
Forensic nursing - I have unfortunately very little to do with forensic nurses. This is because forensic nurses combine professional expertise, such as in sampling for DNA collection, with human touch and human qualities, such as sympathy and comfort. They help rape victims who report to the hospital for exams after the crime, and help the cops deal with molested or beaten kids. I deal chiefly with dead people. Very little overlap. Regret that.
No goats? (looks both ways) Cool. Relief noises.
Quincy had the best writers in the world.
People would ask Quincy: “When did he die?”
“Well, I can’t say for certain, but it was between about midnight and 12:15.”
Me: “Well, I can’t say for certain, but it was between the time he was last seen and the time he was found dead.”
That is because I rely on science, which has large holes in it and is uncertain, rather than scriptwriters.
I have often envied Quincy his scriptwriters.
On the other hand, that opening montage - when he fires up the Stryker to see if the rookie cops will faint? A classic.
Hi Pazu!!
Forensic pathologist, surgical, cyto (I make the sign of the Devil at you if so to keep you away)?
No, I’m pure East Coast! Also, those of us who wished to sign out our OWN FRIGGIN’ CAUSES AND MANNERS OF DEATH steered clear of San Francisco.
I dunno who’s there now - who is there?
Well, he is primarily a professor at UT Memphis, teaching either med students or residents–I’m not sure which. He’s been a specialist in neo-natal and obstetrical pathology for many many years. Written a few books. I feel weird putting his name on the MB, so maybe I’ll email it to you, if I can.
His initials are DRS. I feel like a CIA agent!
Some of my earliest memories involve fetuses in jars of formaldehyde(but not MY face)-that and him sacrificing baby mice or bunnies (I have no idea why). I used to visit him in his lab/office at U of Chicago when I was little (he went to Memphis in the late '70’s).
And what about Quincy? He was cool, if a little dramatic (TV and all). And thanks for answering my questions, I felt left out!
Yingtong, iddle I po, too much.
Personal habits - I used to believe in immortality. I felt the conviction of what CS Lewis says somewhere, that if we all feel as if we should be immortal, then that reflects something in our spirit that means we should be. Then I began to feel about human beings, after many experiences of their deaths that seemed to teach me something on a wordless level, that we are designed to grow, mature, get old, and die.
I think about it with this analogy. Suppose someone throws a softball as hard as he can into the air. You are the softball. Birth, you’ve just been thrown. Rising, you are ten, twelve, eighteen. You feel yourself speeding into the air. It seems reasonable to you that you should achieve escape velocity and never return.
But all the time you are slowing. You realize it about thirty - you are ten years from the peak, but you begin to detect the slowing. It worries you. At forty, you know you are slowing to the perihelion. You feel the ball turn around and start to head back down around forty-five - or fifty, if by reason of strength, as the Bible says. From there on you aren’t dead, but you know you are going to die, because the ball is picking up speed, and you can perceive the trajectory. You will crash to Earth some day.
Another way of putting it: Ever watched kittens being born? Ever adopted one and seen it turn into a cat? Have kittens of its own? Get old and move slower? Die? We are those kittens.
Yeah, I watch what I eat and I exercise and don’t smoke, but I can feel the softball picking up speed.
Sorry, didn’t see your post re Quincy. I liked him, even if he DID manage to solve every death that came his way. And none of them were “he died in his sleep of an MI” kind of deaths. Funny, that.
I’m a critical care nurse-so I only take people to the morgue. I have seen a body unzip from it’s body bag (so to speak) due to gas gangrene–pretty damned spooky when you’re in the morgue by yourself.
Sure, if you want to get a PhD and an MD. Each career path takes about 6 to 12 years after college. How many years you got, softball?
I have never met anyone who was both. It’s like wanting to be a CEO of a satrtup entrepreneurial software company and also a seminary president. You could. But will you?
Those 3d imagey thingies are great for laughs, aren’t they?
I love forensic anthro. If I hadn’t done forensic path, that would’ve been my other love. We laugh at the series sometimes together.
Once you’re brain dead, you ain’t waking up. EEGs have taken a lot of the mystery out of this. Still makes a great story - see Poe, EA for examples. Couple of years ago friends of mine thought they felt a pulse on a corpse trucked in from outside, did the only reasonable thing: started CPR. No pulse. Corpse was dead. Newspapers had a field day.
I am always aware of how short life is and how much I would like to have written on my tombstone that I accomplished. And how few of us are going to gain fame for great works. I am disappointed already in my obit. I wonder what life is for.
Some other thread.
You know, I don’t remember it? It was almost 3,000 ago. I met my first cadaver in medical school - but don’t remember my first hospital autopsy as a resident. Sheesh.
Tell him not to respect us too much. Couple of cops watching the autopsy one day were making fun of a third cop to me, a guy I knew to be a really great investigator. They said, if he ever comes in here, ten minutes max, you’ll see him turn pale, and run out of here. I thought about it for awhile, and I said, you know what would make me turn pale and run out of the room? A perp pointing a gun at me, is what would make me shit my pants.
Remember that what I do is sort of a lab test. And I am sort of a lab technician, albeit one with a lotta degrees on the wall. I do not get out there every day and face the shits and jerks who do the crimes. I am not part of the thin blue line. You have every reason to respect yourself for your own unequalled abilities when you’re a visitor in my morgue.
Yeah, we all kind of like him, though we’re sarcastic and cynical about having to live up to his image.
You know half the deaths I autopsy are natural, and maybe half of those are MI’s in their sleep.
You’re a critical care nurse? Thank you. God bless you and keep you.
Yeah, pretty spooky, isn’t it?
I’ll support that, gabriela, as long as you support my claim to be number pi. 
I’m also going to bump my own question: What would you say was your most surprising finding? I’m still hoping it’s not the broken ribbed “SIDS” baby, but I’m not holding my breath.
I have to figure out how to put my e-mail into my personal profile.
It’s in the NAME index - you won’t have to be a major Quincy-ass detective to figure out who I am.
I’m not connecting to DRS.
You remember that museum in the basement of the ME’s office with all the dead fetuses and cancers in formaldehyde? Did your dad start it?
Um, I don’t know. My memories aren’t organized around “most surprising”, but rather around “damn, did you see that”.
Uh - if it’s not mine, friend of mine’s case - little old lady with something red in her vagina, autopsy extracts it, it’s an upside down aspirin bottle with a red cap, inside it’s full of rocks of crack?
{blushes with the intense embarrassment of one who was always a nerd in high school}
Oh my God. I’m one of the cool kids now? No wonder TubaDiva spoke to me!!!
Was that part of the cause of death, or just incidental? :eek:
Incidental!
By the way, you know the proper procedure when you encounter a “mule” on the autopsy table?
(The Colombians sometimes sent peasants up to New York City after making them swallow 50-100 condoms packed with cocaine, to shit them out and hand them over to local drug lords for sale there. Once in awhile an overstretched condom burst - instant death from cocaine poisoning)
“LOOK! Everybody! I have found a Mule!! I am autopsying one! Count the cocaine bags with me! All together now! One… two… three…”
To absolve you of suspicion of taking any of them for yourself.
Yes, you - uh - we are.
Hey, that guy who trained with Bill Bass is excited about decomposing corpses. I prefer corpses, period.
[snork]
Now wait a minnit - isn’t that how they brought down Al Capone?
My old boss in (mphm mphm) used to say that having the FBI investigate a homicide was a horror, because they were untrained as homicide detectives and did a sloppy and badly informed job that a rookie would be ashamed of. But income taxes? Let them at him!
So the FBI could qualify as forensic accountants.
um, LeOrUsNaEv, I already said I adore your name, but if it comes down to defending you, I don’t know exactly what you’re doing with handsome college students.