This morning I saw the autopsies of two women. The first seemed to be a case of tuberculous anorexia, and the second a knife-induced intrapericardial hemorrhage. The extremely skinny woman was initially thought to have died from complications due to her anorexia, but when we opened her lungs we found that they were riddled with infection. The chain-smoking doc immediately said "TB." I took a step back. Another doc was called down to confirm and she wasn't so sure. Infection, yes, but she said TB has a "chalkier" look - less wet looking. At any rate, I was assured that it was no longer contagious. Nonetheless, all of the interns put on masks. The fact that her lungs were in such horrible shape and that she never went to the doctor because of her assuredly nasty cough means that she was in a pretty 'irregular' situation as they say. Probably homeless. The doctor said she was psychotic.
The next woman was much healthier looking. The room buzzed with the possibility that she was pregnant. She looked it. She had several superficial cuts on her chest. The wounds didn't even reach the muscle. But when she was flipped over there was a knife sticking out of her back! The handle had been removed by the police to ease transportation, but the blade was immovable. It was stuck in a vertebra and a rib, but which ones?
"Ho! Les anthropologues! Vous devriez savoir. C'est quelle côte?" chain-smokey asked us. (Côte = rib.) I immediately replied, "Ah, c'est évident, c'est la cinquième" with a facetious grin, thinking that it was near impossible to know before cutting her open. But nobody laughed! The doc checked the x-ray. "Ouaip! C'est en effet la cinquième côte!" I explained that I had been joking, but my colleagues just looked at me with suspicion.
As the autopsy proceeded, large dark red gelatenous globs were found near the heart where the knife had touched the heart. The doctor held the globs before me and said, "Tu sais qu'est-ce que c'est? Thees eez euh... agonie. Comment dit-on 'agonie' en anglais?" "Agony," I said. When you die your blood stops coagulating. Large amounts of coagulated blood means that she died slowly.
Finally we cut open her uterus and found not a baby but a sterilet (intrauterine device). She was just fat!
The next woman was much healthier looking. The room buzzed with the possibility that she was pregnant. She looked it. She had several superficial cuts on her chest. The wounds didn't even reach the muscle. But when she was flipped over there was a knife sticking out of her back! The handle had been removed by the police to ease transportation, but the blade was immovable. It was stuck in a vertebra and a rib, but which ones?
"Ho! Les anthropologues! Vous devriez savoir. C'est quelle côte?" chain-smokey asked us. (Côte = rib.) I immediately replied, "Ah, c'est évident, c'est la cinquième" with a facetious grin, thinking that it was near impossible to know before cutting her open. But nobody laughed! The doc checked the x-ray. "Ouaip! C'est en effet la cinquième côte!" I explained that I had been joking, but my colleagues just looked at me with suspicion.
As the autopsy proceeded, large dark red gelatenous globs were found near the heart where the knife had touched the heart. The doctor held the globs before me and said, "Tu sais qu'est-ce que c'est? Thees eez euh... agonie. Comment dit-on 'agonie' en anglais?" "Agony," I said. When you die your blood stops coagulating. Large amounts of coagulated blood means that she died slowly.
Finally we cut open her uterus and found not a baby but a sterilet (intrauterine device). She was just fat!
1 comment:
Quite enjoying these posts.
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