You will be putting my parts back when your done, right? See I have a meeting at work on monday and all.
So why do you cut all these parts and weigh them and stuff. Does it really make a difference in figuring out why someone died? Like your subway people, even I can figure out they are dead cause they got creamed by a big-ass train.
You take out the tongue? Seriously? That never would have occurred to me. I’ll happily volunteer, but I see you’re full up today. I’m first in line for the next thread, though. 
Sure, I’ll put 'em back.They’ll be kind of… sliced up and… scrambled.
I’ll explain why as we weigh your parts. We didn’t autopsy the guy who was creamed by the big-ass train. He had already been pretty effectively autopsied for us.
However, the chief was walking by the table where we were doing his external exam, and he said meditatively to my fellow Fellow, John, “I’ve always wondered what the human head weighs.”
So John picked it up, and tossed it in the weighing pan.
Four point six kilograms.
Ten pounds.
Gosh, I almost forgot to write down the external exam.
Well developed well nourished female Doper, non obese, appears younger than her stated age. Nasal and facial skeleton intact to palpation. Sclerae and conjunctivae free of jaundice or petechiae. Natural teeth in the mouth in good condition. Neck free of injury or ligature marks. Chest free of anteroposterior diameter increase. Breasts symmetrical without palpable masses – Hey! Hal! Quit it! This is a doctor’s exam!
We’ll just say normal female without external signs of trauma for the rest.
Okay, on to the internal exam. (bum bom BUMM) The autopsy.
Don’t I get X-rayed first? Don’t you want to know about all my broken bones? Or are you going to find them the squicky way?
Is it ok for me to ask questions while you work?
Are we going to get to the part where we see what indecisive1’s last meal was? That’s always my favorite Law & Order moment.
picks up random metal instrument
Hey, what’s this do?
*pokes **Hal *experimentally in the arm
Poor Hal he’s going to get a lot of ribbing when his turn comes. I’m looking at him right now wondering what that weird rash all over his thighs is from.
No, you don’t get X-rayed first, young lady. You don’t have any bullet holes or knife wounds in you, and you waltzed in here identified, so I don’t care if you have a metal prosthesis in your hip! What, you think the taxpayers are made of money?
(Virtual taxpayers - I suppose that would be the gerbils here. Squirrels? Whatever it is that runs this board.)
Oh yes, feel free to ask anything you want - although you may want to turn your head and not look.
Mr. Bus Guy, wait your turn. Go advise Hal on something … interesting … to eat for lunch.
WhyNot, put that down! You don’t know where it’s been! Actually, you do know where.
That thing is a 12 gauge needle. If you’ve never seen one before, you could easily pass the tip of a ball point pen into its lumen. And it’s reuseable - we are the last bastion of reuseable needles - so it’s not very sharp any more. indecisive1, I think this is a moment when you might want to turn your head away.
Oh, darn - I forgot to put you up on the block. Please sit up. Children, observe this two-pound brick of white plastic? See how we wrap it in rags? There’s a reason for this. Once the block gets blood-soaked from the rundown, if there’s no rag to retard friction, the body will slide right off!
The block does NOT go under your neck. We are not here to be comfortable. The block and its rag go underneath your upper back to elevate your chest. Just let your head loll back. We’ll put your head up on the separate head block shortly, but we have to get your tongue out first.
Tell you what, you folks block her and get her ready while I go put on my astronaut suit and the gloves. I wear size 7-1/2. I’ll be back. I’m quick with the suit and gloves.
I’m back. Let me know if you have a hard time hearing me through the mask.
Okay, Whynot, hand me that 12 gauge needle and the glass reuseable syringe. I need 60 cc of blood for all the tests. I know Toxicology prefers the femoral vein, but I’m better at the subclavian, so we’ll stick this thing right under indecisive1’s clavicle. No, no alcohol pad - we never bother with them. I mean, if you think about it, why?
At least during this first autopsy he’s shown some decent interest in a naked woman, instead of a sheep.
That is, as well as a - Hal? Where did you go? Hal?
*hands **gabriela *the pokey thingy.
So, are you at increased risk of meningitis and hepatitis from doing this all day? Are you vaccinated against them? What happens if you get a needle stick after it’s been jabbed in her?
Ok, here comes the big needle. Think of it as a Christmas present. Excuse me while I poke. You know, I haven’t done a live person in a long time; have to worry about dropping the lung, don’t I? Oh well, I keep my angle nice and flat, go in just outside the little slope at the 2/3 point of the collarbone, and head for the sternal notch. There, it’s in. Now I gotta poke around a bit - you don’t automatically get it into the blood vessel just by sliding it under the skin.
First I gotta angle it a bit, because I keep hitting bone, so I know I’m at that uncomfortable little acute angle between the collarbone and the first rib. A little more towards the neck should do it. There. Now I slide it in so far you can’t believe a needle that long has vanished all the way under a real person’s skin. I’ve probably gone right through the subclavian and flattened it, making holes in both its sides. So now it’s time for me to put a little suction on with the syringe and draw back, and… There! Gusher. My word, you have better blood pressure than most dead people. I’d say you must have 40 mmHg in there.
I’m thinking you must be a cardiac case.
Sixty cc in no time. Pull the needle out. That’s odd, a little trickle of blood keeps following it. My corpses don’t usually do that.
But some of them do, particularly the cardiac deaths, so I’ll ignore it while I go fill up the two white and red label tubes for alcohol and illegal drugs, the purple and red top tubes for us to save in perpetuity, and the filter paper at the edge of the blood spot card for DNA.
Somebody put a couple of scalpel blades on the handles, will ya? I like #21s.
Hmmm…
Dr G Medical Examiner = gabriela?
Hmmm…
Just so you know, I don’t do well at gory. I’ll be the newbie over in the corner, discreetly throwing up and wondering what the hell made me decide this career path.
Might as well answer while I wait for untrained assistants to struggle with scalpel blades. I am only at increased risk of meningitis during the opening of the skull in a Neisseria case. If I’ve had to open the skull and cause bone dust with brain specks in it to fly all over the place during a Neisseria meningitidis case, I have to take Ceclor for a couple of days.
I am always at risk of hepatitis. I don’t give blood because of my constant workplace exposures. I have been vaccinated against the ones you can vaccinate against, that is, hep A (not worrisome because it’s fecal-oral), and hep B. But there is no vaccine against hep C. Not that they’re not working on it, but it’s an almost insoluble problem. You see, there’s hundreds of genotypes of hep C, much like the common cold. There’s no animal model to test the vaccine on; hep C will only live in humans. There’s no test tube system to keep the damn stuff alive in lab; hep C is finicky, and will not accept even human cells in a Petri dish. Last I heard, they had a sort of a kind of a vaccine, which was of no use to uninfected people, but which slightly improved the response of infected people to clearing their own virus.
Hep C scares me. Still negative after almost 3,000 autopsies.
Ivylass, I have great respect for you, but if you’re the nausea kind of person, things are going to get squcky real fast now. Please feel free to leave the room. Don’t feel you have to ask if you feel lightheaded; just go. The bathrooms are just outside the autopsy suite.
Don’t you have to be ducking out to the warehouse to assist Woody in catching that perp? Oh, you mean police work outside of the lab is not part of the coroner’s job? Silly TV shows!
Hmm. How come there’s already blood on these supposedly unused scalpel blades? And why do WhyNot and Draelin have big pressure dressings on their thumbs?
Oh well, no matter. It takes these little razor bladelets a lot of uses to get dull, so let’s proceed to the autopsy. If she’s ready. indecisive1, are you ready?
I’m expecting something decisive.