Not Newsworthy

I have been working at the ME's office for the last three weeks. Wow. While I can't talk about the specifics of what I see every day down in the autopsy suites, at least I can post the local news stories about the cases that are coming down to the morgue.

I attempt to find stories that don't list the names, but some stories are so widespread that names have already gotten out. Most of those are the locally high profile killings and deaths. While I might list that we did a suicide on a particular day, although I know the person's name, I don't list the obituary because I think that would be disrespectful to the person, and especially to the surviving family.

Some deaths, though, no one reads about. The prisoners who die while serving their sentences. The single overdoses that are found by friends or family members. I add the suicides in here, because they sometimes don't even get an obituary. Children are in here because SIDs, suicides and sudden deaths, for the most part, don't get reported. And the tiny victims of drug-influenced mothers who never live to take their first breaths, mostly because they are too premature or died before they were born, they generate no print as well.

We had a full room today. Three tables all going at once. No news stories on any of them. They were simply: The Overdose, The Accidental Overdose, and The Found in Woods.

Stories that did make the news from earlier this week:

Hot Dog Death
Shooting on Porch

Until next week!

The Brain Box

Ok, so I am still rotating through the Medical Examiner's Office. The cases from the last couple of days have included several suicides and several mass traumas. We talked about how the patients that don't make it to the Emergency Department end up at the ME's office.

This is why I am doing this rotation. Nowhere else am I going to be able to be elbow deep in someone's chest looking for the traumatic aortic rupture, or holding someone's brain following the path of a bullet with my finger. (By the way, the pic is a Jello mold not a real brain.)

I wanted to quickly respond to some questions I received from Betty:
- The ME's office gets cases that warrant a forensic medical examinination as deemed by the County Coroner (there's a difference between coroner and medical examiner), and cases that fall under certain protocols - an unwitnessed death in a person who has not been under a doctor's care for a certain period of time, any death involving an inmate, an unexplained or unnatural death (murder, suicide, accident), deaths involving children or infants, and several other specific circumstances.

- We have a protocol sheet we follow in the E.D. and in the hospital when there's a death. We have to call the M.E.'s office, and they "sign-off" or take the case. If there is an autopsy that's not the same thing... a family can ask for an autopsy and that is performed by the hospital pathologist.

- I usually don't participate in autopsies, but I occasionally get to cut something or dissect an organ, and I get to touch most things after the official examination is done, which is a good thing because I am not a "spectator"

Tomorrow is an off day, so I will be back at the ME's on Thursday. Here's the case list from the last few days, including 3 suicides -
Homocide
MVC Fatality