Forensics is a word that sounds cool

On monday I started my new rotation at the Medical Examiner's office. The Medical Examiner= the doctor who does autopsies on people who die of questionable deaths. They are employed by the state. They practice "forensic medicine" and have to determine cause of death. They are like the attractive African American lady on CSI. They see some intense shit.

My job there is to observe the autopsies and learn things by reading "Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death: Guidelines for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigation."

So far I have witnessed the following autopsies:
1 homicide by gunshot
2 suicides by gunshot
2 deaths by natural causes
3 drug overdoses
1 accidental strangulation

Needless to say, this has been a very weird experience. Forensic autopsies are very fast and very brutal. The ME's are looking for a very specific thing, and they don't pause to dabble in the finer points of human anatomy that we agonize over in the academic autopsy setting. These pursuits are unecessary and superfluous when trying to determine cause of death, especially when that cause is obvious (aka someone shot the person in the chest). They are in and out in a few minutes, yanking out organs, sectioning them rapidly, their well trained eyes searching for things such as pulmonary embolisms, coronary artery thrombi, intra-cerebral hemorrhages, bullet tracks. I just stand by, in awe, occasionally asking simple questions and running my hands over lifeless organs.

Intense things I have done:
- put my finger in a bullet hole
- seen a bullet
- held a brain that was still warm
- talked to police officers

Chapters I have read in "Spitz and Fisher's Medicolegal Investigation of Death":
- Injury by Gunfire
- Asphyxiation
- Forensic Entomology and its Use in Dertermination of Time Since Death (did you know that the blowfly is the first insect to colonize a body after death?)
- Sudden and Unexpected Death from Natural Causes in Adults (I'm halfway through this one)

This will be a very cool month. I think I will learn a lot, and this will be an experience that I never ever forget. I don't think I would want to do it as a career, though. It is NOT like CSI.