Dead people
I am on autopsy rotation right now. It is a very intense and weird experience. Being around dead people. Seeing their faces, their haircuts, their cute little painted toenails, the evidence of them in the world leading lives surrounded by loved ones. This is my second autopsy rotation this year, and what strikes me is actually how much less it affects me now. Seeing a dead person is not shocking or suprsising. I can walk into the autopsy suite and have a casual discussion about weekend plans with someone without even referencing the dead person in the room. I can cut into their flesh without the pangs of emotion, the heavy feeling of "whoa. this is a big deal. i can't believe I'm doing this." It doesn't get to me anymore.
Does that mean I'm dying inside? How ironic- i'm spending all this time with the recently deceased when really I am the one whose soul is dead? Naw, not really.
You just get used to it.
The thing that takes the most work on this rotation is acutally going through the person's chart. You have to piece together their last waking moments through snippets of hastily scribbled medical notes. Quick three-line entries from doctors, residents, respiratory technicians, nutritionists. You try to figure out what was happening inside that person's body - why did it stop working? And its kind of funny, the notes seem to decrease in number as the patient gets closer to death. Those big time lapses in the chart are filled, in reality, with people scrambling around, IV's going in and out, units of blood given, resucitation attempted. Family members notified.
Those are the weird ones to read: "The operative findings are incompatible with survival. Discussed with husband. Comfort care measures initiated." Straight up. Aka, we discussed with the man sitting anxiously in the waiting room the fact that his wife, the one who he has spent everyday of the last 45 years of his life with, is going to die soon and there's nothing that can be done about it besides keeping her sedated until she goes. Discussed with husband.
Dying is intense. It is also very smelly.
whoa. awesome entry, dude. Wow. I feel really moved and also worried (about death). If I die, will you autopsy me? I'd just feel better if I knew you were doing it. I don't want some stranger seeing my secret parts---parts I haven't even seen!! No, if someone is to hold my heart in their hand and squish it around, I want it to be thee.
i was wondering about how a medical person deals with death on a day-to-day basis, and how they would ever be able to reconcile that with their normal lives. but i could imagine that you would just get used to it, like one gets used to doing any other weird thing in your life, without having to make fundamental changes regarding what you know about the world.
dead bodies: you just get used to it!
I think its a lot easier to deal with it from the relatively impersonal view of the autopsy. Yes, its a dead person, and that's kind of weird, but I didn't know them. I never talked to them, or their family, nor do I know anything about their lives other than what's in their chart. Its pretty easy to be objective about a human body if there are no emotions attached.
Everyone looks the same inside. (for the most part)
And you have your list of what you need to do, what organs need to be weighed and sampled, what descriptions need to be made. And the body gets sewn back up (by the autopsy assistants) and wheeled out of sight. Then you are just left with human organs, which is just kind of cool.
Now, if I had been the student or doctor that had worked with the patient and gotten to know them, it would be a lot harder to see them as just a "body."
I have done quite a few autopsies, and i agree - after a while you just get used to th em. Medical school teaches you pretty well how to separate teh living from the dead.
I did a month of pedi path - entirely different. Placental autopsies and "products of conception" bother me a lot more than older people.
Death though, is no big deal. We all will do it, everything that has ever lived except the minute portion that happens to be alive right now has already done it successfully.
i see dead people around there are those alive but have died inside and there are those dead who are resting in peace lucky bastards for the ones who are dead poor cunts for the ones who are alive x x x
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