This morning I finally had the famous autopsy experience everyone has been talking about since September. After so much time wondering what it would look like, smell like, feel like, I now have the answers! After a brief tour of the facilities, us four students and the professor donned our smocks and shoe covers and entered the autopsy room. It's a modest space with plenty of sunlight, with two stainless steel autopsy tables on either side of the room. There was an elderly woman on the table to the right, and a black body bag on the left. A few gendarmes were hanging out in the observation area, because the guy in the body bag is the result of a criminal affair. Then before I could really get my bearings the room burst into activity, with two teams of five starting to work on both cadavres.
The first shock was when they opened the body bag. The guy was almost entirely carbonized. He was a victim of a barbecue marseillais - he was killed execution-style with a handgun, then placed in a car, doused in petrol, and set ablaze in order to obfuscate any evidence. It smelled like, well, burnt meat! As they started slicing him up his flesh really looked like a well cooked steak. The chain-smoking head doctor was compelled to cry out, "Regardez! Il est à point!" (Roughly 'Look! He's cooked to perfection!'). The ambiance was anything but somber. They do this day in and day out.
On the other side of the room the autopsy proceeded more normally, with the systematic removal and inspection of all the major organs. First the brain was extracted, which was one of the smellier operations, not because the brain smelled, but because the friction from cutting bone with a small circular saw caused a burning odor. Otherwise the room did not stink. The old lady had died only an hour or two earlier, and was therefore 'fresh' and the barbecue guy just smelled like left-over steak. Once they removed the bowels though, everyone caught a good whiff of dead people poop.
At the end, a friendly, overtly gay technician was left alone to whistle and sew up the old woman to make her more or less presentable for her funeral. He took good care to keep her hair in order.
This afternoon we're going to see the autopsy of a guy who was driving along last night (not far from my school) when another car pulled up and blasted him with a Kalachnikov. I'm 'lucky' since gang related killings have been relatively infrequent lately. There have been about a dozen since the beginning of the year, and I get to see two in one week!
The first shock was when they opened the body bag. The guy was almost entirely carbonized. He was a victim of a barbecue marseillais - he was killed execution-style with a handgun, then placed in a car, doused in petrol, and set ablaze in order to obfuscate any evidence. It smelled like, well, burnt meat! As they started slicing him up his flesh really looked like a well cooked steak. The chain-smoking head doctor was compelled to cry out, "Regardez! Il est à point!" (Roughly 'Look! He's cooked to perfection!'). The ambiance was anything but somber. They do this day in and day out.
On the other side of the room the autopsy proceeded more normally, with the systematic removal and inspection of all the major organs. First the brain was extracted, which was one of the smellier operations, not because the brain smelled, but because the friction from cutting bone with a small circular saw caused a burning odor. Otherwise the room did not stink. The old lady had died only an hour or two earlier, and was therefore 'fresh' and the barbecue guy just smelled like left-over steak. Once they removed the bowels though, everyone caught a good whiff of dead people poop.
At the end, a friendly, overtly gay technician was left alone to whistle and sew up the old woman to make her more or less presentable for her funeral. He took good care to keep her hair in order.
This afternoon we're going to see the autopsy of a guy who was driving along last night (not far from my school) when another car pulled up and blasted him with a Kalachnikov. I'm 'lucky' since gang related killings have been relatively infrequent lately. There have been about a dozen since the beginning of the year, and I get to see two in one week!
2 comments:
Incredible! Please do report the rest of your autopsy internship.
and I want to see an autopsy report on Maurice...
Post a Comment