Staff on a cardiac ward told me this story. Patient died (expected death). Was monitored at the time, and went into asystole. Doctor pronounced her dead. As the nurses were washing her body, she suddenly said, “That’s cold!”. Monitor back on and she’s in sinus rythm. This went on for a further five hours; long periods of asystole followed by periods of sinus rythm with the patient lucid and verbalising until eventually the asystole became a permanent condition.
I imagine that in this scenario, an autopsy could have begun, though if she “woke” with a cold flannel, I’m fairly sure she would have complained about being cut up.
I know a guy who had a multiple organ transplant. Basically, he had most of his innards replaced. The big scar from that operation sure looks like an autopsy Y (alright, it’s more of a T shape) but they weren’t actually doing an autopsy, just removing most of his organs. Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right…
Anyhow, he’s doing much better now. Think I’ll suggest he goes as “autopsy” survivor" for Halloween.
Nope. Thanks to postmortem lividity (gravity-associated blood pooling in lower portions of the body) and clotting, there’s no gushing of blood associated with doing autopsies, so no need for artificial drainage.
Besides, we always start the procedure with a Black Mass.
So if you made an incision and the wound bled, wouldn’t that be kind of a clue to the condition of the patient? I suppose a person who was alive, even if barely, would have *some *blood pressure.
I’d recommend the book Devil in the White City. It’s about a notorious serial killer who was in Chicago at the time of the World’s Fair. He gave at least one of his victims to a person who took it and returned it as a articulated skeleton - no questions asked.
We had a local case where a guy was in a car wreck and pronounced dead at the scene. He woke up at the morgue and had a lot of health problems due to lack of treatment.
IIRC only a doctor can legally pronounce a person dead, and there are rarely doctors at accident scenes. I would be curious to know who signed the death certificate. Was this incident reported in the news?
Sounds good to me, mrAru went to an SCA event as a leper once [lots of suppurations during an 80% of the body attack of poison ivy that the navy gave him calamine lotion to use as a first try … oozy, funky looking beigy patches of crust. Just loosly wrapped him in gauze and gave him a dhoti looking loin cloth, a sort of shawl made of a large swatch of muslin gauze and a begging bowl. He made 31 cents =)]
There was an incident in either North or South Carolina in which a guy was sent to the morgue after being decalred dead by EMTs. The doctor at the morgue unzipped the body bag to discover the guy alive. I’ll look for a cite.
