In the refrigerator

So I open the refrigerator, look inside, and I take the ... uhmm.... yeah... an amputated human leg. I handle it to the pathologist and we start dissecting the infected part of the hip which was removed from the unfortunate patient. The surgery was done last Friday and the leg stayed in the fridge for 4 days and only today did we take it out to look at it. The smell was not good.


studyhing it a lab technician comes in carrying a large tray of tissues from other patients: colons, prostates, lungs, you name it. We'd dissect them and place them on slides, stain them and look at them next day under the microscope.


This is pathology, which is what I'm doing this month. Organs taken from patients in the hopsital are sent to the pathologist to be studied and that is the way cancers, inflammatory diseaes and plenty of other disease are diagnosed.


The worst part about it is what I had in medical school: Forensic Medicine (tebb shar3i). When someone dies mysteriously or in an accident the body is sent to the forensic medicine lab to search of what could have caused the accident. For example someone who died in a car accident might have died of a heart attack first then then had the accident, and it might be important to determine what caused the death for legal and insurance issues. Some people who appear to have committed suicide might have suffocated to death by someone else but they were placed in a situation (like on a hanger) to suggest that they killed themselves.


Sounds interesting? Ok, wait until you open the stomach of a young person who died 2 hours ago after falling down from a building to find the eggs and tomatoes he had for breakfast this morning. Wait until you observe the brother who is slowly recognizing the black body of his sister who was completely healthy but died that morning after caughting fire in the kitchen. It's not cool.


I left the hospital and on the way back I bought some grilled chicken, and when I got home I placed it on a tray, then opened the refrigeragtor and took out.... uhm... yeah... a diet Pepsi. I remembered doing something similar earlier today, but in a different place and definitely for a totally different purpose!


I started eating my meal and hoping that nobody would be opening up my stomach in 6 hours to take out the grilled chicken!