I saw dead people

Story # 2

Last week, on Wednesday, I woke up about an hour and a half earlier than I usually do, ate breakfast and took the NYU bus (if you can call that thing a bus) to work instead of walking. This was all to prepare myself for what was hopefully the most grotesque experience I’ll ever have.

The Chief Medical Examiner of New York’s office is right beside the NYU Medical Center and they work together on a lot of projects. Because of this, Joel, can hook us up with them for various things. Well, one thing that the Medical Examiner’s office does EVERY weekday morning is autopsies. Autopsies on people who die from unknown causes, who die in homicides, whose families want them to have autopsies, etc. And every year, SURPies are invited to watch these in groups of 4.

I was pretty certain that this was something I didn’t want to do. I watch the cheesiest horror movies through my fingers and feel bad for bugs that I accidentally stomp. This was not my thing. So, I didn’t sign up for it.

Autopsy week came around and everyone who did sign up for them started to talk about their experiences. I cringed every time I heard one of these stories, but was still strangely fascinated by them. I mean, how many people can say they have seen an autopsy? When else was I going to get another chance to watch an autopsy in the Chief Medical Examiner’s office? That and some of the people in the program are pretty convincing, so I decided to go ahead and do it. Once you’re there, no one forces you to stay there. Apparently you can walk in and out of the room whenever.

So its Wednesday morning, I get to the medical examiners office and there’s only one other visitor. A random graduate student. Graduate students are alright, but they’re no SURPies. A second year medical student took us to the autopsy floor. The dead bodies were lying in the hall and I was strangely okay with this. They were just bodies, not people; and it was surprisingly easy for me to accept that at this point. I will say this though, that entire floor had a gloomy feeling. Everything from the old school white tiles, to the fluorescent lights, to the dull walls. As though a dementor was permanently living there, sucking all the positive energy out of the place. Perhaps it was just me anticipating what was about to happen, but I couldn’t imagine how anyone can work there and not be chronically depressed, or a little off their rocker.

After we scrubbed in, we went into the big room where all the action takes place. Everyday, there is a list of people who’re getting ripped open, where they were found, relevant background, wounds on them, etc. The cause of death is not known. That’s what the autopsy’s for. The medical student was showing us all the little bottles they collect samples in. “That’s the heart box, and that’s the brain box, that for peripheral blood” and so on and so on. I was, again most surprisingly, still feeling pretty zen about all of this. The doctors, or medical examiners, were all actually pretty happy, normal people. I always imagined people with jobs like these would have dry personalities and a raw sense of humor. They were all actually laughing and talking about relationships. Well, more about paid sex than relationships, but y’know, normal people talk nonetheless.

As far as my stability was concerned, things went downhill when they started getting the first body into position. His hair was swishing around and I couldn’t help but stare at his face. At that moment, he looked like a real person, not just a body. After rigor mortis sets in, a dead body is pretty still. The only part that still has normal movement is hair. It was near impossible to not keep staring at his face. I couldn’t help but imagine him walking down the streets, swishing his hair off his face.

The body is prepared for the autopsy by elevating the chest a little and washing the counter underneath with a hose. Then some liquid is injected right under the eyes. I covered my eyes and looked away really really quickly when this happened. I don’t know, even on a dead body, the eye seems like something that shouldn’t be messed with. After that, the real cutting begins. The medical examiner who was leading the autopsy started this by nonchalantly saying “opening him up.”

The first cut is a ‘V’ starting at the shoulder blades and meeting at about the center of the sternum. This is followed by a straight line right down from the point of the V to the end of the intestines. These cuts are made with such ease, its not so hard to watch. I probably have a harder time cutting a slice of cheese. With them, its just a smooth movement, and there it is, a thick piece of sliced skin. After these cuts are in place, the skin of the v part is pealed open up to the neck. This was when I got my first look into a human body. I really don’t know if words could describe this part realistically. Suffice it to say that all the pictures in the elementary school science books, the one with the people drawn without skin with labeled organs and skeleton systems and what not, are pretty accurate. Imagine that, with real blood, and real flesh, and real bones. It’s weird. Blood samples are collected from the randomest spots and then, the skin over the intestine is ripped open. This guy, and apparently this is really rare, had 5 liters of some yellow fluid in this abdominal cavity. Most of this gushed out as soon as the skin was opened. It was g-ross. That’s what alcohol does to you, people. While I was still recovering from this, the doctor took out a pair of giant clippers (atleast 4 feet tall) and started to cut out the ribs where they attach to the sternum, in order to get to the heart and lungs, etc in the rib cage. Oh my god! The sound that bones make when they are cut… This was crossing the line a little from medicine into carpentry! And even when I looked away, the sound was haunting. I had to leave the room at this point and get some fresh, living air. I came back in about 4 minutes. They were now taking out and cutting pieces of/examining the lungs, heart, intestines etc. This was all fine by me and I figured I’d probably be okay after that.

So, obviously, the most disturbing part came right after I thought that thought. I was looking at the heart being sliced, while someone another examiner was working on the head. I saw him make a cut around the head (the cut was roughly where a hairband is on your head) and pull the skin apart. They literally peel the skin and squeeze the skull out. I won’t even try to explain exactly what that is like. It’s not a great way to start off a morning. Then, the skull is cut open… with an electric drill!!!!!!!!!!! The sound that makes is the most disturbing I have ever heard. Again, it sounds strangely like drilling wood, but I couldn’t distract myself by thinking about cutting wood. I was watching a skull being drilled into! It was like a SAW movie, in real live. I had to leave the room again. I waited outside till the skull drilling was done. Someone in the hall asked me if I was doing alright, I told him about the drill, and he said “What? That is the best part”. He meant it, too.

More samples were collected and then the sciencey stuff was done. Besides the medical, there was a photographer, taking pictures of interesting wounds and internal bleeding and such. She was actually trained specifically for that job. I don’t understand when or how anyone decides that’s what they want to do with their lives. What makes someone think, ‘boy, I really like photography, I could take pictures of dead people’?

Anyway, the last thing to do is to pack the body back up. It’s fascinating how the human body works. I have always only been interested in studying this at the most back levels: workings of single cells, creation and control of cellular machinery by genes, and differentiation of functions between all the cell types. The most fascinating concept to me is the organization of a living body; just how these different machines come together and make a functional person. All this is sooo complicated when you’re thinking at the basic cellular level. But, standing there, watching a person being opened and torn apart, the human body just seemed so simple. Like a videogame console or something—put a bunch of things in their right places, and voila, it works! When a person’s innards being cut out, when his hollow body is lying on a cold metal counter, it just looks like a container for organs. Like a fruit basket without the fruits. There was nothing human about it. It’s hard to think that this body was once a person who lived and loved. It’s even harder to think of him as a person when his organs are all stuck into a plastic bag and shoved back into his ribcage. That’s that pack up protocol. Shove organs in a plastic bag (it was red), put the bad into the rib cage, and sew the skin. Even the thread used for the sewing process was a thick straw string. Something you’d imagine a puppet or voodoo doll to be sewed with. Before the head is sewed, they pierce a thread with a cardboard labeled with a number right behind his ear Like a price tag that’s sewed through a piece of clothing. He was definitely more it and he at that point. Despite the fact that he looked pretty real after the sewing was complete. Throw on a shirt and cover the head stitches with hair, and he was ready to go. Just like that.

I don’t know if the experience has scarred me any, but I do know, like I always did, that I could not go into medicine. I cannot treat a person as an object; I’d rather work with cell cultures or microscopic nematods, thanks. Other than that, I also realized that I do not appreciate living organisms at a macro level. Organs just don’t fascinate me. I wasn’t excited when I saw the brain, but show me a neuron, and I’d be jumping up and down.

What can I say, it was relieving to finally leave the medical examiner’s office after autopsy number 2, which was more or less the same as autopsy 1, except that there were police around because it was a homicide. I was in my lab 5 minutes later, feeling a lot happier and completely at home. I guess I already knew I belong in a lab. It was fulfilling to find that out all over again, in a completely different way.