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The First Autopsy

 Originally Written: 07/26/17

10am today marks my first ever autopsy. It’s different from anything else I’ve ever seen in medicine yet. There’s a distinct separation of it from surgery in the fact of the gentleness of the operation. Surgeries still have a gentle touch to their work. There’s more inherent respect with it. Maybe it has to do with the distinction between life and death in both cases. However, it still doesn’t mean a body should be manhandled. Truth be told, my thoughts about it are still scattered. It’s better just to do a runthrough of it over the next couple of pages in order to really just process what I had witnessed. It’ll also give me a more balanced look for perspective and some insight to process it.

The patient:

  • 71yo white woman from unknown location
  • Diagnosed with progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy at some point in her life, probably later in life
  • Was put on hospice during her last days
  • May have had a meniscus repair or knee replacement
  • Was treated well during hospice
  • My have had some sort of uterine surgery due to difficult finding the uterus
  • May have had liver damage prior to death, I saw nodules in her liver

Update 02/26/18:

  • She was from the US not too far away from where I grew up.
  • Aside from having progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, she also had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
  • She avidly enjoyed knitting according to her records
  • She survived her husband

Other Notes: Quotes from my Lab Chief

  • “You never for forget your first, mine was during medical school in anatomy, so we stuck with the same person for a long time”
  • “I was doing a lot in the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. At the time, a lot of the patients were educated, white, males. So, they were left out on their own. So, they would come to the clinic just to talk and I got to know each of them really well. Then they started dropping like flies. And I had to do the autopsy for those, and it was hard because it was like looking at a family member. You never forget. I still remember all their names, what they looked like, everything.”
  • “Yeah, the way that they handle the body isn’t the cleanest. You’d figure they’d give the body a little more dignity. They were alive not too long ago…”

Sketches







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