Some of you may find the following post distasteful -- I apologize for that. But as it was a major moment for me, I'm using the blog to write about it. I believe most of you will be fine with what I'm about to discuss, but please know that I go into detail as I go along. That being said:

Yesterday about 10 of my coworkers and I went to the San Jose Coroner & Medical Examiner's (for brevity purposes, c/m.e.'s from now on) office for a standard orientation field trip. I was unable to go when I was actually new so I went this time around. For those of you pondering the link between organ donation and c/m.e.'s, it's that as soon as a person is declared dead under certain circumstances (any unnatural death -- accident, homicide, suicide -- or any death which occurred more than 20 days after a visit to an M.D. for a major medical problem) it is criminal to move or tamper with the body until the c/m.e. gets there or gives their express permission. They have to determine the cause (literally -- "lung disease," or "gun shot wound," etc.) and manner (natural, accidental, homicide, suicide or undetermined) so any intervention could seriously tamper with their investigation. Since nearly all brain death is from a sudden or traumatic death -- aneurysms, head trauma, asphyxiation, etc. -- this means nearly all of these patients have to go through a c/m.e. first. Thus it's good for us to have an understanding of them, and they of us.

And what an understanding we got.

I have now seen close up photographs of every type of death-causing wound one can think of -- gun shot, stabbing, blunt instrument, asphyxiation (whether self-imposed or homicidal), MVAs, burnings... I have seen examples of rigor mortis -- with discussion of its stages and the length of these stages; liver mortis or lividity -- when the blood in the body drains into whatever is the lowest part of the body after death because the heart has stopped pumping and gravity takes over -- and its stages and their lengths; early decomposition -- with bodies turning green, bloating, and sloughing off the skin, and the eyes sinking back in the head...I also saw the stages of an autopsy -- a photograph of the Y incision, a photograph before the removal of the chest plate, a photograph after the removal of the chest plate (where you could clearly see that the guy smoked somewhat -- his lungs were a little dark -- ate badly -- his heart was almost entirely encased in fatty tissue -- but didn't abuse alchohol -- his liver was still shiny and smooth), and a photograph after the removal of the organs. Apparently, when they're done dissecting your organs, they put them all in a garbage bag and then back in the chest cavity, as preparation to be sent to the funeral home for embalming. I wish more people knew this because those who are squeamish about organ removal and keeping the body 'whole' and who won't donate because of it might see things in a different light if they knew the body rarely, if ever, stays whole.

Some of it was reminiscent of some of the flashy stuff you see on CSI: a motorcyclist who'd been hit and run over, who had the tire mark of the offending car so plainly on his shirt that you could easily see the word "steel" -- such that a car in question's tires could be digitally photographed and matched via superimposing transparencies; a man with bludgeon lacerations on his head, one of which also plainly showed letters which ultimately matched to a brand name etched onto a wooded baseball bat; strange patterned head wounds that clearly match a framing hammer; conjunctival petechiae, or tiny ruptures under the lower eye lids which indicate that death was by strangling or other asphyxiation; the nature of a person's lividity showing that they were obviously lying on something lumpy such that if it wasn't still there, then the body must have been moved; determining whether a badly burned body inside a car had died by the force of the accident or by the fire by checking to see whether the throat was sooty deep down; using clay strips on a skull to slowly reconfigure the face to the point of creating a photograph to be sent to law enforcement agencies, such that a missing person can potentially be matched; and of the importance of gathering the skin "glove" from a decomposing corpse -- the skin sloughs off just like a snake's, and if you can gather the skin and keep it whole, you can get fingerprints for identification purposes;...and so on.

The real event, however, being that after seeing this power point, we then toured the facility.

And yes, there were bodies around. Nothing completely uncovered, but I definitely saw toes. Lots of dead toes. And in two cases where the coverings had slid off slightly, dead stomachs. They were mostly pale, and yellowish. (I was struck by how yellow the human body can be. We mostly see ourselves as red and white inside, but really, all our fat is yellow and it shows plainly when the red is gone.) And yes, there was a distinct smell -- not of rot or anything like that because the rooms we were in were either refrigerated and/or well ventilated, but an earthy, dusty smell. The closest I could come to relating it to Steve was those times when you are in traffic on the highway and you end up rolling slowly past road kill that has been thoroughly smashed and dessicated. There's no 'tang' to the smell, no rancor, just the earthy, dusty, odor of a fluid-less body.

I think the creepiest part was the pruning shears. Medical grade ones cost $300, so they were using your standard $30 ones...

Enough said, I think.

I have a continuing fascination (perhaps inherited from Mom) with the human body in all its gorey and glorious detail, so I wasn't at all traumatized...mostly just startled. I hadn't expected this trip to be so much about detail and so little about donation. I hadn't expected photographs and the tour and dead toes. But I'm glad I went. I know this much -- after seeing the effects of not wearing a seat belt, not using a child seat, and drunk driving, I'll be an even more careful driver.

Thanks for listening.