AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
frantic pounding on the freezer door
What the hell is wriggling on my nose?!
Lemme out! Lemme out! I’ll haunt you all, I swear to Og! I’ll round you up and Pit the lot of you! I’ll correct your grammar and your spelling and I’ll tell TubaDiva you’re being mean!
Guys?
Guys?
Please?
There’ll be a lot of paperwork involved if I die in here.
phew.
Thanks, Draelin.
Medusa babies? Cool!
salutes sharply Oo, this is a rather larger blade than the Xacto knives I use for art projects. Okay, deep cut, deep cut, less deep cut, circle left, less deep cut. Did I do okay?
Oops. I’ll clean that up. Where are the paper towels?
I’m back with lunch!
Ok, who got the egg salad? WhyNot? Ok, just toss it in the drawer there, it’ll stay cold.
Oh man, what is that smell? It’s just like somebody contaminated the peritoneal cavity with shit.* That’s nasty…
Who had the pastrami? Any one? Oh that’s mine.
You are all the most helpful autopsy assistants I’ve ever had. Particularly the egg salad and the loads of scalpels. The Weird One, even if you nicked the transverse colon, that was the best first incision I’ve ever seen a newbie do. You sure you’ve never done this before? Because if you really haven’t, you’ve got … talent.
Talk to Winston Smith about opportunities in the, er, field.
Of course, it wasn’t completely your incision; Ivylass started it, but she seems to have hightailed it off into the corner, all because of a little blood. Well, fine. She specifically said she didn’t want to dig her hands into anything icky. Removing the bowel means digging your hands into something icky. T-W-O, if you are allowed gloves, are you up for it?
Stop making me laugh! I can’t do a proper autopsy when I’m laughing!!!
By the way, your little experience with the, er, wriggling things reminds me of part of my early hazing on the job. I was expressing deep disgust with a case full of wriggling maggots waiting on my table for me to autopsy it when one of the New York City techs said, “What’s your problem, doc?”
I said “I don’t - like - maggots.”
He: “Maggots are good!”
Me: “What - makes you - (eww) say - that?”
He: “Maggots don’t want to go home with you. Wait till you meet lice.”
Did a cloud of poisonous spores foof out of the abdomen? No? Silly TV shows!
Well, I said I always enjoyed dissections, didn’t I? peering into the cut Huh, I’ve only seen subcutaneous fat once before. I think. What’s “subcutaneous?”
Hmm, okay. I’ve always wondered how sausage was made! BTW, if you don’t want help from someone who’s constantly making inappropriate jokes, you should probably have one of these other guys be your assistant.
Ooh! Ooh! I know this one!! Subcutaneous means under the sink. I mean skin.
Under the skin. As in “I’ve got you/Subcutaneous…”
There is no one on the Dope who will not crack me up at any inappropriate moment. It’s like hiring your forensic people out of a pool inhabited only by Marx Brothers.
Grab a fold of the bowel and double it in half. See that apron of fat it’s hanging off of? Stick the scalpel through it. Now follow me as I illustrate - tug, see, just like this - the small bowel is going to run right off the mesentery, and we should get the whole small bowel taken down in five minutes.
Lissa, would you like to find the appendix? It’ll be in the right lower quadrant behind the big balloony part of the large bowel (the cecum), just where the small bowel meets the large bowel.
If you find it, hold it up and show me how much like a fishin’ worm it looks, then clip it off with a scalpel and throw it into the waiting formaldehyde jar marked “Save”.
Gigi, you got a serious fantasy problem fed by classic television, you know that?
I say this, me, who am performing a virtual autopsy surrounded by Marx Brothers on a bulletin board.
Ah, then I have seen it before. I got a bad cut in my hand, and while waiting for the nurse to stitch me up, I got curious and looked inside. I was surprised how much fat there was in my hand.
So why specify subcutaneous fat? Does anyone have fat that’s not stored under the skin? And what would that be called? Supercutaneous?
Draelin, you’ve just earned so many brownie points that I nominate you to do the next squcky thing of your choice. What would you prefer: open the ribs to reveal the heart, start on the scalp incision to get to the brain, or get a syringe and aspirate the vitreous humor out of indecisive1’s eyes?
(I hope she’s really dead)
Well, if she wasn’t when we started, the point should be moot soon.
tugging on bowels A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes a Y incision! Wow, there’s a lot of this. Where should I put it?
The Weird One! The Weird One! Look in front of your eyes! Here we are inside the abdominal cavity, and even though indecisive1 is, er, was a pleasingly svelte woman prior to autopsy, do you see all this fat!
This is perivisceral or intra-abdominal fat, the stuff which when in excess is associated with the deleterious consequences of morbid obesity. I can roll out phrases like “the deleterious consequences of morbid obesity” with loquacity and eloquence because I is a doctor. You practice while you hack out some of this non-subcutaneous fat.
I feel like I just won the Miss America Pagent, only grosser!! I’ll do the scalp incision. Do I get to take her face off? 'Cause that’d be cool. If not, I’d be happy to just take off the top of her head. Can I keep her hair?
Whee, time to go home! Have fun finishing the autopsy without me!
In the kick bucket. It’s the large steel bucket on the floor with the clear plastic liner.
My husband, who is NOT a doctor, delights in the name “the kick bucket” because it is the only item in the morgue the official name of which combines the words “kick” and “bucket”.
Kick it over here, will you?
Silly. We leave her her scalp and her hair for the open-casket funeral. All we do is start behind the left ear, go up over the top of her head slightly behind the centerline, and end up behind the right ear. Keep it close to the attachment of the ear so nobody at the funeral will be able to see the cut.
Since The Weird One had to leave, I’ll open the chest cavity. Dear me, I do hope that heart isn’t still beating. It would squck me out if it was still beating.