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09/28/2006: "Autopsy thrills"
Song of the Day: All Saints - Black Coffee
So today was A-Day, the day that I got to view an autopsy at the ME's office for my Forensic Sciences class. The professor wanted us to have the opportunity so that anyone who goes to court with a case that involves an autopsy is aware of the process and where it might be appropriate to ask the expert witnesses questions.
There were two bodies being worked on in the room that my group was in, and when they first got started, my first reaction was a moment of paralyzing and thinking, "I can't do this." That quickly disappeared as I listened to the technicians explain what they were doing and why, and I watched as one-by-one, the organs each came out to be weighed, and fluids were collected.
One of the corpses had died from a gunshot wound to the head, so the next order of business was removing the brains and the bullet. By this point, over 20 minutes had gone by, and I'd figured that since I'd made it this far, I'd be good for the rest. Once they started going for the brains, I started getting the distinctly dizzy feeling one gets right before passing out. At that point, I decided it would be best to go home.
It wasn't the cutting-open-of-the-body that seemed to get to me as much as it was an amalgam of things - the very blueish cast to the skin, the smell, and the sound of the electrical tools as they cut into the bodies, and the expression on the corpses' faces. You'd definitely have to be in a certain frame of mind to perform autopsies every day, and the technicians definitely seemed to be in one since they spent the whole time joking around with each other.
So maybe I wimped out in the end, but at least I can say I took advantage of an unusual opportunity and didn't shirk from it because it would be gross.