Ultimate assault

So I know I shouldn't let things like this bug me but the other day one of the criminalists--who seems like a perfectloy nice guy, let's just get that out of the way-- fires off with "as if the autopsy itself isn't the ultimate assault." This is in response to the sentiment that I've noticed among investigators that our determination of body core temperature is a little, well, invasive.

Okay. I know what it looks like I'm doing when I'm doing an autopsy. There's blood (and, frankly, worse) all over me, all over the table, and all over the decedent who appears, to the untrained eye, at the end of the procedure to be, well-- empty. And I'm standing over him (disproportionately, it is a "him"-- be careful out there, guys!) holding what, to the untrained eye, appears to be a gigantic knife and peering with unseemly interest at something that could reasonably be described by a sane person as, well-- slimy. (Look: no offense, but inside, you're kinda slimy.)

The word that's missing from this whole discussion is: thorough. It's the same reason you do a rectal exam when you admit a patient to the hospital: it's not because you're mean, this isn't something you're "putting them through," and it certainly isn't because you like to shove your finger into random people (that's between you and another consenting adult and, being neither, is none of my business): it's because you're thorough. The person in front of you is your patient and they are going to get the best care you can provide and that means that you do the whole thing, even the parts you don't really like. There's a dignity to it: they deserve the best you can do which means they get the whole enchilada.

Look, I trained a very, very long time for this. I fought for this. I think about what I do, I read about what I do, and I do the very best I can every time. Which means that I have to check, for example, the heart. Which menas that I have to look at the heart. Which means that it has to leave the chest. Those things that are preventing it from doing so are called "ribs." Hence the branch cutters. I know what it looks like when I'm taking those branch cutters to my patient-- hey, I know-- but it has to be done or else we never get to find out whether it was his heart or not. You can say it's for the family but you do it whether there's a family to claim him or not (and depressingly often it's not) because this is a human being and when a huiman being dies we don't just chuck him in the trash. He matters. He has dignity. He deserves to have his life close properly: with an answer. We care what happened to him. We want to know. His very human dignity demands it.

You may not notice it at first but that's love at the tip of the knife.