My first decomp

Monday, June 15, 2009

This morning at 7:00 am I was picked up by Amy. Amy is one of Ed’s deputy coroners and my traveling partner for Loveland today. Now this was the first time for me to see and be around a decomposed body. When we picked it up from the morgue we did not remove it from the bag, or even open the bag for that matter, but the smell was a little pungent. That is not a great smell to have to endure for very long and the trip to Loveland, Colorado takes a good 5 hours each way. But, I found you really do get used to the smell after a while, especially with the help of air conditioning. Can't say the same for the people who walked by the van when we stopped to get gas or to take a bathroom break.

Only after we arrived at the autopsy lab did I get my first glimpse of the body out of the bag. All bodies decompose differently based upon the environment, length of time left to decompose, weather, etc. This body had been in a house with the heating on high for several days. The skin had blisters that had popped in some areas, and the diener told me that those blisters that were still present were under the skin and could be felt. The whole body was a greenish black color and the skin was peeling off. The first step the diener and the pathologist took was to peel off the rotting skin, which comes off in layers like a sunburn, but in much bigger pieces. Then they cleaned the body with the use of a handheld shower head.

Now a lot of people have a problem with the smell of these types of remains and I can understand why. When the pathologist made the Y incision the smell got stronger, much stronger! Amy told me that she was watching me at that time to make sure I would be OK. Its when you first get a whiff of that smell that most need to vomit. After that you just get used to it and go on. I can only describe the smell as that of liver, which I hate. I think over the years you just get used to it because the diener, Amy, and the pathologist didn’t seem to have a problem. Ed says that in this line of work you begin to teach yourself how to not “smell”, which helps you to not react strongly to the odors. I was again asked to take pictures of the body, write down the weights of each organ following the instructions of the pathologist, and to stand next to the pathologist as he took each inner organ and separated it from the others and cleaned it off. After the weights were taken the pathologist then took a knife and sliced through each organ looking for abnormalities. It was really amazing that I got to stand this close and watch exactly what he was doing , keeping in mind that it was also stinker near the organs because they are at the source of the built up gases. I also asked questions and he obligingly answered all of them. He and the dieners really are a nice group of guys.

After the autopsy my boyfriend Luke met us in Loveland and all three of us went to eat at the Cracker barrel. It was really nice to see Luke (I really have missed him) and to talk about his job and other topics of interest to all three of us. I ordered beef stew and a peach cobbler for dessert which were really good. After that meal the diener from the first autopsy, who is also a friend of Amy’s, came by with his daughter to do a “drive by hugging”. He stopped for a bit and even drove up next to Luke and I and teased Luke out loud on his truck's megaphone. This caught the attention of everyone around (which luckily there weren’t a lot of people). Luke took it well and even played around with him.

We then drove back to Laramie through very heavy rains and high winds. It was so bad that the truck drivers were pulling to the side of the road and stopping. We stopped in Laramie hoping to pick up the skeletal remains that Dr. Weathermon had analyzed for us, but we missed him by a half hour due to the high winds and rain. We then continued on to Lander. Once we had returned the body to the morgue I found that the air smelled fresher and nicer, and it made me wonder just how bad it (and I) must have smelled all day! I guess I had adapted to the smell but it did not stop me from appreciating the air when the cause of the odor was gone. I was later told that this set of remains was not as foul smelling as most decomps, which makes me wonder how really bad the smell can get.