Thursday proved to be an interesting day and it had nothing to do with the cases. The cases that we did have were another homicide and an alcoholic. The homicide was two shots from a handgun, one in the chest and one in the abdomen. The alcoholic was a decomp. He wasn't too far along. He had the green marbling effect on his body and he was getting kind of stinky. The green marbling effect was aided by his jaundice. The jaundice was due to his alcoholism and basically makes the skin appear yellow to yellow-green. The combination of decomp and jaundice coloring made this guy look like the Hulk. Jaundice is usually a good sign that the liver is having some troubles, and sure enough, his liver wasn't in good shape. His liver was a yellowish color when it should have been the color of a Hershey bar. The liver also had the start of cirrhosis, which is when scar tissue replaces healthy tissue and the liver becomes fibrotic.

Now comes the interesting part of Thursday. The cops brought a dead pig in to see the effects of using a taser on the skin and beating it with different types of crowbars. They are trying to gather evidence for an old case that will be going to court soon. They wanted to make sure that the mark on the neck was from a taser and to also know whick type of crowbar was used to bludgeon the victim to death. Pig skin is the most similar to human skin, which is why the cops decided to pick one up from the local butcher to try this little experiment.

Friday there was what will probably be a drug overdose (pending toxicology results), a suicide by shotgun, and a man with cardiovascular troubles. The man with cardiovascular troubles looks like it may have been a stroke. However, the brain will have to be looked at by a neuropathologist in order to confirm that.

There are a few common questions that I get asked when I tell people that I am interning in the morgue. The first most common question is: "What is the most disgusting/gruesome/grossest/etc. thing that you have seen?" Another common question is: "Doesn't it make you sad or depressed seeing all those dead people?" With that question people like to toss around the words "innocent" and "tragedy." Another very common question I get asked is: "Do you ever lose your appetite? or Do you ever feel like throwing up?" I think I will address this third question because its fun to relate food and pathology.

The only problem I had with food was with my first bad decomp case. The smell stuck with me all day and I could taste it in my mouth. The only thing I could eat was some white rice (actually white rice kind of looks like maggots... yum), but that was hard because everything tasted like decomp. After that one time I have had no problems with food. Yes, human muscle does look like a type of steak and liver looks like the liver you would buy in the grocery store (thats just plain disgusting) and when it is cut up, it looks like cubed pieces of beef you would use in a stew or shish kabob. The aorta looks like a piece of pasta when it is opened and cleaned off. Postmortem blood clots look like grape jelly. Decomposing brain looks and has the texture of cake batter. And then there is the fun of actually fishing through the gastric contents (in other words, vomit). You can find all sorts of goodies by fishing through the contents of the stomach. It is sometimes a fun game to try and guess what the decedent's last meal was. And don't even get me started on the many different types of bowel contents (poopey, for all you refined folks out there). Let me just say that you know when a person had Mexican food before he or she died. So, I have no problem with loss of appetite. I even eat my lunch in the morgue with bodies that are being autopsied in front of me (shhh, don't tell OSHA. They don't want us eating in the autopsy room.). As I have said, it is the talent of pathologists and morgue personnel to be able to describe everything in terms of food (actually a lot of doctors do this in medical school) and still be able to enjoy those foods.

Yay, another berry aneurysm today. Also a bike rider who was hit by a car and a man who died in his burning house. This guy was alive when the fire was burning. There was soot in the lungs and he had a high amount of carbon monoxide in his blood. This made his livor mortis (the small amount you could see under the soot and burnt skin) more pink instead of the usual purple tinge. The blood was also a very bright red instead of the very dark (almost black) red that is normally found in non-burn cases. The bright color of the blood is caused by the carbon monoxide.

The headless decomp was looked at again today (whoever said that a Medical Examiner isn't thorough?). There were more deer guts to look at, which were looked at mostly to decide that they weren't human. Today the maggots were literally frothing in their own decomp soup. There was a foam on top of the loose green sac of skin that contained the sludge that was once human organs. The long bones had been removed by the anthropologist so the legs which were already slimey and floppy to begin with were even more difficult to handle now. The reason the decomp was looked at again was to remove the radius and ulna of each arm and the cervical vertebrate where the killer cut off the head and hands. This was done so that the crime lab can analyze the bone and try and determine exactly how the head and hands were removed. The initial thought is that a small-toothed saw was used. The doctor was also looking at the area of the skin that the killer cut up to try and remove a tattoo to prevent identification of the body. We now have a pretty good idea of what the tattoo looked like, but there were words on the tattoo that were difficult to make out through the lacerations. The detectives were alerted about the tattoo information and now have a possible lead to work with. On a side note, the local newspaper reports that the police are looking into the possibility that this case may be related to an unsolved case a few years ago that had similar circumstances and a body that was found only about a mile from this body. The newspaper points out that this is only a possibility and the cops are going to assume that it is a coincidence unless the evidence proves otherwise.

Seems like I jinxed myself by reading a book about maggots. A body was brought in and autopsied over the weekend that was very much infested with maggots. The interesting thing about this body was that it was decapitated and the hands were removed. This, along with the cut up area where there once was a tattoo, was probably the killer's way of thwarting attempts to identify the body. Now the body was so badly decomposed that race and age are difficult to determine. The initial estimates are that the body was only in the woods for two or three days. It is hard to explain without pictures, but take my word for it that decomposition aided by maggots progresses very quickly. As I have mentioned before, decomposition makes an autopsy very difficult. There is not much that can be gained by fishing through the green soupy decomp fluid and mushing around the unidentifiable organs. That is why the forensic anthropologist visited again today to look at the bones. He looks at the ribs, pubic symphysis, leg bones, and arm bones to get an idea of race, age, and stature. This will then help police match the body to any recent or upcoming missing persons reports. That would be a good lead and could then be confirmed with DNA analysis. For example, if a mother reported her daughter missing, then DNA would be collected from the body and from the biological mother to see if there is a match. The scene itself had all sorts of flesh and entrails in the vicinity. Most likely they are deer entrails from hunters (I don't know too much about hunting or why hunters would leave entrails scattered around). Since the entrails were in the vicinity of the scene, then like any good forensic investigation, those entrails must be examined. Unfortunately for us, the ME is the one who is chosen to examine those very stinky pieces of deer flesh and guts. I guess the thought process is that the deer may have inadvertinly eaten something that may have been a clue or possibly the deer guts may have been part of the crime itself. Who knows, if it is in the scene of the crime, it must me investigated. Did I mention that they were stinky? I couldn't tell which smelled worse, the headless and handless maggot-infested body or the deer guts. It was like the two smells were having a war and they both were winning.

Aside from the wonderful sights and smell of the homicide case, there was a car driver who hit a pole that subsequently fell on him and another motorcycle accident. There was also a guy who got tossed around by a wave at a beach and had a nice MI that ultimately resulted in his death.