Just Another Day on Necropsy

Warning: Posts relating to necropsy week are generally not for the faint of heart.

When we do a post-mortem examination, naturally we have to record what we found, which involves making notes on a blue sheet with boxes for each body system. My classmates tend to do this afterwards, over lunch, which is probably pretty sensible, as you'll see. I'm too paranoid that I'm going to completely forget something important, so I have to write things down as I think of them.

Today, once we removed a section of ribs, we set them down to one side and got to work removing the heart and lungs. As an aside, we had a really fascinating case. The dog had suffered from a bloody nose for about a month, which had gotten worse until the owners decided to euthanise. The abdomen was looking a bit "pot bellied" as well, but the dog was perfectly bright, happy, and eating well. However, when we opened the abdomen, a massive liver tumour practically jumped out at us. When we checked the nasal cavity (by sawing the face in half through the nose, by the way), it turned out to have, as suspected, and totally unrelated, a nasal tumour as well. Unlucky dog, eh?

So while we were busy getting excited about all the pathology, it turns out we had set the slab of ribs and muscles and fat right on top of our blue sheet. Whoops. Eventually, we noticed this, and when we picked the ribs up, the sheet went with it. I tried to pull the sheet off, but it wouldn't come. The fat was stuck fast. Pull pull pull, yank yank yank. Ummm, there's a giant mass of flesh stuck to half our paper.

Somehow, I managed to free our sheet without tearing it, leaving a large wet area around one quadrant. Blood and goop is a pretty normal part of a pathologist's life, so it probably doesn't matter apart from me feeling self-conscious. I proceeded to make the sheet worse and worse through the course of the lab by writing down notes and measurements with increasingly bloody gloves.

My partner and I looked at each other at the end of the morning and debated whether we should rewrite it, but there wasn't much time before the afternoon tutorial, so we figured, "Nahh, it probably doesn't matter." It planted the seed of doubt, however, and after the tutorial had finished, we both started thinking, "Well, maaaaaybeee we should rewrite it. Everyone else's PM reports are all pristine and neat." However, after a brief search, we discovered the clinician had already taken our pile of papers. Oh well.