My first day of medical school was incredible. I didn’t have any classes, but I learned a lot nonetheless. Shortly before classes started, I was offered the chance to attend an autopsy. At that point in my education, I was fired up, and ready to dive into everything. So I asked to go, and one other guy wanted to go too.
We wandered around the KU Med campus, and eventually made it to the pathology department. We asked for directions a few times, and eventually ended up in the autopsy room.
The Autopsy
In the room, we found a couple of pathologists, the physicians who perform the autopsies, and a technician. They were finishing up an autopsy. We were introduced, then directed to stand out of the way, which we were more than happy to do. We stood against a wall and peered into the shiny stainless-steel autopsy table. There was a dead man on it, and he was naked. His head was collapsed, like a deflated ball. I didn’t know what had happened to him, and I didn’t ask. I just watched in horror as the men worked quickly to finish their exam, and the tech rolled him out of the room. It’s hard for me to remember, but at that point in my life, I had never seen a dead body. I knew nothing about medicine, or surgery, or hospitals. My head was spinning. I turned to look at the other student who had come with me, and he was studying the floor.
The pathologists changed into clean gowns and gloves and chatted with us for a few minutes before the tech brought in the next body. Then, the tech returned, pushing a wheeled table, with a shapeless body bag on it, and everybody got to work. Together, the men grabbed the bag and slid it across to a clean autopsy table.
The Body Bag
When these guys unzipped the body bag and started pulling out body parts, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. It was all blood, and limbs, and skin and dirty clothes, and god-knows-what.
It turns out this 21-year-old kid had been running from the cops in his Mustang and hit 130 miles an hour on K-10 before a bridge brought him to a halt. When you’re young, you think you’re bulletproof, but you aren’t bridge proof. A thousand tons of steel-reinforced concrete stopped the car instantly and slammed the dash backward, cutting off his legs. The first medical fact I learned: one of the things the legs are used for is keeping blood in the body. When the legs are removed, all blood leaves and you die.
Funny Guys
One of the things I remember most about that day was the fact that the pathologists kept joking while working on this corpse. They had to measure the height of the body, and this was obviously hindered by the fact that he had no legs. They got maybe five jokes out of this fact. For example, one guy was holding a tape measure, and the other guy kept moving the leg. I was torn between being disgusted at their casual manner and extremely amused. After all, I’ve always had an overactive sense of humor.
The docs went through the pockets, and they had to report the contents for their records. One of them pulled out a wad of bloody bills and counted the money.
“One hundred forty-three dollars.”
“What was that?” asked the other.
“Forty-three dollars.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The joke in this case being that the pathologist was going to pocket a hundred-dollar bill soaked in blood. Again, kind of funny, kind of horrifying.
They had to cut the clothes off the body, and I remember looking at the kid’s genitalia, against my will. I couldn’t help it, it was just there. I had not seen very many penises at that point in my life, basically just the gym locker room. At this moment, I experienced an uncomfortable blend of embarrassment and morbid curiosity. I’ve seen quite a few now (all professionally). It struck me as one of the saddest things, this little lump of flesh, something that had been such a big deal during his life, now lifeless and gray, just like him.
The rest of the procedure
The docs went through the rest of the autopsy, taking blood samples, cutting the top of the skull off, cutting open the chest and abdomen, removing and weighing organs, on and on. I was riveted, and eventually, the shock of seeing a naked dismembered dead dude cut open and gutted went numb. After what seemed like hours, the doctors finished up and dismissed us. They were quiet and professional for the rest of the autopsy. I don’t know if they ran out of jokes or became worried that the snowflake Gen-X students were going to report them to administration for inappropriate behavior. I like to think that they felt the terrible reality of that situation just as I did, and they were whistling in the dark. Indulging in a little gallows humor to pretend that they weren’t crying inside. It’s very common in medicine, making light to get through the hard days.
After the Autopsy
Later that day, after we were finished and I went home to my apartment in Olathe, I couldn’t wait to tell my wife about everything I had seen. It turns out, she had seen the news report on this accident. The policeman in charge said that it was the most gruesome accident he had seen in his thirty-year career. A surreal blur of thoughts and images crowded my mind. I actually had a little pride that I was involved with somebody kind of famous, somebody on TV. Although, he was dead…. I was simultaneously grossed out and excited, and interested from an intellectual standpoint, all of the biology and medicine involved. But most of all, I began to get a glimmer of hope that maybe someday, I’d learn enough to stop the blood pouring out of some poor kid, and keep him from ending up on the autopsy table.