October 22, 2025 • 15 mins
Content Warning: This episode contains graphic descriptions of autopsies, bodily fluids, and morgue mishaps. If you’re sensitive to these topics, this episode may not be for you.
In ninth grade, Kendall Crowns spent a day at the local morgue, arranged through his father’s friendship with a medical examiner. One autopsy was enough to set his course for life. Decades later, he has seen how morgue tours have a way of separating strong stomachs from the squeamish. In this episode of Mayhem in the Morgue, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns explores the fainting fits, sudden bouts of vomit, and the unforgettable lessons learned when visitors get the vapors.
Highlights
- (0:00) Welcome to Mayhem in the Morgue with Dr. Kendall Crowns
- (0:15) Kendall Crowns’ first autopsy at age 14
- (4:00) The case that set a career in motion: witnessing a Russian roulette victim’s autopsy
- (7:15) The FBI agent who knocked himself unconscious on a morgue door
- (7:30) Why morgue tours often end in fainting or vomiting, and how to spot the signs
- (9:30) A boasting cadet crumbles after a cyst explodes
- (11:30) The resident who fainted, recovered, and went on to become a chief medical examiner
About the Host: Dr. Kendall Crowns
Dr. Crowns is the Chief Medical Examiner for Travis County, Texas, and a nationally recognized forensic pathologist. He las led death investigations in Travis County, Fort Worth, Chicago, and Kansas. Over his career, he has performed thousands of autopsies and testified in court hundreds of times as an expert witness. A frequent contributor to Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, Dr. Crowns brings unparalleled insight into the strange, grisly, and sometimes absurd realities of forensic pathology.
About the Show
Mayhem in the Morgue takes listeners inside the bloody, bizarre, and often unbelievable world of forensic pathology. Hosted by Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kendall Crowns, each episode delivers real-life cases from the morgue, the crime scene, and the courtroom. Expect gallows humor, hard truths, and unforgettable investigations.
Connect and Learn More
Learn more about Dr. Kendall Crowns on Linkedin, catch him regularly on Crime Stories with Nancy Grace and follow Mayhem in the Morgue where you get your podcasts.
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's episode does not have a discussion of the death
of an individual, so if you find that upsetting, unfortunately
this is not the episode for you. Welcome and may
have the law with their host, Doctor Kinder crowns today's episode.
(00:23):
I have the vapors. In every morgue or medical examiner's
office that I have worked in, there are always tours
or student observers that come in to learn about forensic
pathology or autopsies in general, and they do this by
watching an autopsy. The observers are usually medical students, but
they can be lawyers, law students, police cadets, forensic majors
(00:44):
from a local college, kind of any one that has
a need to see an autopsy as part of their education.
I was once one of these observers. Way back in
nineteen eighty four, when I was in ninth grade, I
had an opportunity to spend a day with a local
medical examiner. This was because the medical examiner also taught
at the local university in my hometown, and my dad
(01:05):
was also a professor at the same university in the
same department that the medical examiner taught in, and they
were friends. My dad had told me about forensic pathology,
and I was very interested in learning more about it.
This was before the Internet. Of course, I checked out
books to learn more, but there wasn't a lot of
easily obtainable information. My dad thought practical experience was better
(01:27):
than just reading books, and he talked to the medical
examiner about letting me come in and watch cases for
the day. Nowadays, we only allow college age students to
come watch cases, but this was forty years ago and
the rules were a little different back then. The day
I went to spend with the medical examiner was on
a Sunday. I had just finished throwing newspapers, which was
my job at the time, and my dad and I
(01:49):
drove across town to the medical Examiner's office. I couldn't
drive by myself yet because I had only just gotten
my learner's permit. We drove across town in our old
green Chevy Townsmen station wagon and he dropped me off
at the Medical Examiner's office. I hopped out of the
car and he told me to have fun, which looking
back on it was an odd thing to say, but
I didn't know until much later that my dad really
(02:10):
didn't know what he had dropped me off to go see.
Sure academically understood what medical examiners do and what they
were about, and how they performed autopsies, but he really
didn't understand the reality of what an autopsy entailed. And
I found this out much later, but that is for
another episode. The medical examiner's office itself was a small,
(02:31):
non ascript building that had a garage attached to it
that housed and repaired ambulances for the local hospitals. When
I went into the building, I was nervous but very
excited about what I was going to learn. No more books,
this was the real thing. I was greeted by the
autopsy technician. He was a big, burly guy with a
beard in a very odd sense of humor. He liked
(02:51):
to make a lot of jokes about vomit or vomiting.
He said to me, you ready, hope, y h your wheedies,
and he took me into the morgary, which was a small,
well lit, white room off the garage. The room had
an autopsy table in the middle of it and a
large drain in the middle of the floor, and that
was it, just a room with an autopsy table. Medical
(03:13):
examiner came in. He was an older, heavy set man,
kind of short. He had a big, booming voice in
large hands. He told me about the cases for the
day and showed me some X rays. Shortly after this,
the autopsy tech brought the body in, which was still
in a bodybag. Both the autopsy tech and medical examiner
were still in street clothes. All they had on was
an apron and some gloves. Nothing else. No head covers,
(03:37):
no masks, no eye covers. I guess back in the eighties,
no one was really worried about infectious disease. And I
just stood there in the clothes I arrived in and
they didn't offer me any ppe. The body bag was
unzipped and there was the first dead body I had
ever seen, And that was the moment my journey into
forensics began. The guy was in his early twenties and
(04:00):
what had happened to him was late the night before.
He had been drinking and was playing Russian Roulette and
he lost, which, oddly enough, is often what happens when
people play Russian Roulette. They transferred him from the gurney
and the body bag to the autopsy table, and when
they did this, he flopped around like a rag doll.
I could see the gunshot wound of his head. It
(04:20):
was a single through and through gunshot wound. There was
blood oozing from both the wounds, and he had raccoon eyes,
which many had had a Basler's skull fracture. Seeing the
dead body didn't throw me off. It was incredibly fascinating
to me. I asked a whole lot of questions that
were probably incredibly annoying, but the medical examiner and the
autopsy technician took it all in good stride and answered
all my questions. While they performed the autopsy, they removed
(04:43):
all the organs. I watched everything. I couldn't look away.
When the autopsy was over, I knew what I wanted
to do for a career, and I asked the medical
examiner what do I need to become a medical examiner
like you? And he said to me, very matter of factly, well,
you know, you got to finish high school, and then
you have to go to college, and then you have
to go to medical school and do a residency followed
by a sub specialization of forensic pathology. And he said,
(05:05):
it's going to take some time. From the age you're
at right now, it'll take about eighteen years to get
to be a forensic pathologist. That autopsy was all the
inspiration I needed, and eighteen years seemed like nothing. So
I knew what I was going to do for my career,
and I made it my goal to become a medical examiner.
And here I am today, forty years later, still working
in the field, and it has never become boring. Seeing
(05:26):
dead bodies has never bothered me, not at any point,
not from that first day to today. But I know
for others it can be quite upsetting. With every tour
group or visiting student, there is always the chance that
someone will have trouble dealing with what they're seeing. And
you could tell when someone was about to have trouble
during an autopsy there would be vague signs or stages
(05:47):
that they would go through. It would initially start when
the group would arrive at the morgue. Before the body
was brought out. There'd be nervous laughter, some odd questions,
the bad joke. There would always be someone that would
make a vomit comment or something along those lines, and
how nothing really bothers them. Once the body and the
body bag would be brought out, some people would stop
talking and they would start looking a little more nervous.
(06:08):
There would still be some odd questions, and when the
body bag was unzipped, they'd start with even more questions,
and then there'd be more nervous laughter and awkward statements
about the body. But you could always spot people that
were really upset. They would get quiet, they would start
moving further and further away from the body and trying
to look anywhere but at the body. They'd look at
the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anything except the body.
(06:32):
Problem was usually in the morgues that I've worked in,
there would be multiple other cases going on at the
same time, so really there was nowhere for them to hide.
Once the autopsy would start, of course you'd get the
complaints about the smell and questions of what do you
do to get over it, which is actually you just
breathe through your mouth and don't leave the room, because
as soon as you leave the room, your nose resets
and you have to start all over again. At some point,
(06:55):
the people that can't handle it reach a breaking point,
and when that point is reached, the excitement begins. Most
of them will just quietly leave and sit in the
hallway and stay out there for the entire time. Either
sitting quietly or crying. But sometimes he would get runners.
And these are the people that just suddenly freak out
or bolt and run right out of the room. One
time we had an FBI agent who bolted when we
(07:16):
opened the body bag, and he ran right into the
metal door that exited the mor When he collided with
that large metal door, he fell backwards, hitting his head
on the floor, knocking him unconscious. He had to be
taken to the hospital, and at the hospital they found
he had given himself a skull fracture and a subduralhymorrhid.
The non runner ones are the ones that try to
stick it out and put on a brave face and
act like they can make it. They start showing symptoms.
(07:39):
First they become quiet, and at some point they start
sweating and complaining. They might start swaying, and then the
color drains out of their face and their skin gets
this kind of pale gray or green coloration, and that's
when they reached the crossroads. They're going to either vomit
or faint. The vomitors, to me, were the worst because
I hate the noise of someone wretching. I also hate
(08:00):
being someone vomit. I am a sympathetic vomitter. When someone vomits,
I feel like I have to vomit, so I always
struggle when someone throws up in the morgue. I try
and look away and try not to pay attention to
what they're doing, and focus on what I'm doing to
get past my urge to vomit. Usually, when someone would
vomit in the morgue, there wouldn't be much wretching. They
would usually just suddenly vomit, but no warning whatsoever into
(08:22):
either the biohazard as wasteboxes or if we're lucky, as sink.
But sometimes they'd vomit directly on the floor and the
autopsy technicians would have to clean it up. If they
didn't vomit, the other pathway was fainting. Fainting is far
more common than vomiting, partially because people don't eat before
they go on the tour because they're afraid they're going
to vomit, and this actually makes them more prone to fainting.
(08:44):
The low blood sugar, the epinephrin dump from seeing the
dead body, or from the fear of the dead body
all culminate in this perfect storm for fainting. So just
so you know if you're ever going to take a
tour and watch an autopsy, make sure you eat first,
because it's better to vomit than to faint, because colapsing
to the morg floor during an autopsy is not the
most clean environment for you to lay down in, and
(09:05):
when you get up, he might actually have bodily fluids
or brain or something like that stuck to your clothing
that you won't realize is there, and you might get
into your car with that when you go home. If
I spotted a fainter before they would collapse, I would
usually offer them a chair or try to get them
to step out or something, because you just don't want
someone to faint in the more. You don't want them
to be embarrassed, and there's the liability of them falling,
(09:26):
of course, But often the fainters would argue that they
could stay because they could handle it, but you could
tell they really couldn't handle it, and you try to
keep an eye on him. One time in Chicago, there
was a group of police cadets that had come for
a tour to watch an autopsy. It was probably a
group about twenty males and females. There was one he
was a tall, muscular ball cadet. He kept talking and
(09:47):
boasting about he was ready for all this, and he
got even louder when the body bag appeared. While the
autopsy was going on, the cadets asked occasional questions, but
they weren't all that talkative. But this tall cadet was
really talking a big game about it and how none
of this was bothering him. I knew it was bothering him,
though you could tell it was starting to really get
to him. I asked him if he was okay, and
(10:07):
his response was better than you, doctor. So I continued
on and waited to see what would happen. And then
something occurred on the other side of the room at
one of the other autopsy tables, and all the cadets
turned at once. The doctor across the room had hit
a large blood filled cyst, which suddenly exploded and covered
her with blood and puss. The cadets all made a
(10:28):
collective gasp, except the bald guy. He had quickly moved
to the back of the pack, actually now standing right
by me, and I looked over just at that moment,
and I noticed his knees were beginning to buckle, and
I asked him, are you okay? He didn't respond, and
then all of a sudden, he started falling to the floor.
I was covered in blood myself up to my elbows
and I had blood all over my ppe from doing
(10:50):
an autopsy, but he was right next to me, so
I shoulder checked him into the wall, holding him up.
He was completely out of it. I yelled out for help,
and the other cadets turned her and grabbed him quickly
and put him in a chair. They helped him regain consciousness,
all while they were unmercifully teasing him. The instructor came
over helped him to his feet. He was a little woozy,
(11:10):
not talking, but he was able to walk, and the
instructor took him out of the room. I didn't see
him again for the rest of the day, but I
am sure to this day he still made fun of
for fainting at the morgue. There have been others that
had passed out as well. Some of nose dived into
the hazardous waistboxes, others fell right on the floor. There
was another incident of fainting that we'll close out today's
episode with. It was a resident who was rotating at
(11:33):
our office It was her first day at the Medical
Examiner's office and her first day in the autopsy room.
She was very excited. She wanted to go into forensic
pathology and she had been assigned to work with one
of the other doctors. We'll call him doctor S. Doctor
S and I worked in the same word across from
each other. The days started like any other day. Doctor
S and the President had their first case's body out
(11:54):
and doctor S was going over the case information with
the resident. I walked past them and headed into the
cooler to find my cases for the day. I didn't
think much of it as about midway into the cooler
when doctor S started yelling for help. I walked back
quickly to see what was going on. And when I
got in the room, the body bag had been open
and there was a new deceiton lying on the gurney.
(12:15):
The resident was lying on the floor being tended to
by another doctor we'll call her doctor L. Doctor S
said she just suddenly fainted, and when she fainted, she
hid her face on the edge of the gurney and
then collapsed to the floor. Doctor L used to be
a nurse, and let's just say she knew better how
to handle this than any of us. Doctor L had
propped the resident's feet up on a chair and had
(12:37):
somehow gotten a pillow to put under her head. I
don't know where that pillow came from, and I don't
ever think I want to know. She was fanning the resident,
checking her vitals, and eventually a resident came back to consciousness.
Doctor S and doctor L helped her get back to
her feet, and doctor S recommended that maybe she'd take
the rest of the day off and get checked out
at a doctor's office. Resident refused, she wanted to see.
(13:00):
She went and cleaned herself up. She came back and
proceeded with the day, stayed with doctor asked for the
rest of the day, watched every autopsyne and didn't have
any more trouble. She continued for the rest of the
month and did very well on her rotation. A year later,
I was working in another office that I would work
at on the weekends. I was a corner's office at
one of the counties outside of Cook County in Illinois.
(13:21):
I would work there on the weekends only when I
had time away from Chicago, and when I would come
in there to do an autopsy. Is there would be
an autopsy tech and a sheriff's officer who was there
to take pictures. When I showed up that day, the
sheriff's officer said the autopsy tech was running late. No problem,
I said, and I just started proceeding getting things ready
to start the autopsy by myself. The autopsy tech showed
(13:44):
up and it turned out to be that resident. She
had gotten a job at the corner's office to be
an autopsy tech on the weekends while she was finishing
her residency. And when I saw her, the first thing
I said is, hey, you're the fainter. And a sheriff's
officer looked up and said, whoa what Wait a second,
you fainted. She looked at the sheriff's officer and myself
very disgustedly, and she said to me, with a very
(14:05):
irritated tone in her voice, yes, yes, I fainted that
one time, but I haven't fainted again. And I said, oh, well, sorry,
it just took me back. You know it was you.
You're the one that fainted at that time, and she said, yes, yes,
I understand that I fainted. And she said, but I
haven't fainted again, and we can just not talk about it. Anymore,
(14:26):
and I agreed she did a great job. She was
a very good autopsy technician. I never worked with her
again from that point on. She did really well in
her residency program and completed it, and years later I
met her again when I was on a job interviewed
at another medical examiner's office, and she just happened to
be the forensic fello. This time I knew her name
and I didn't call her the fainter, and she was
(14:48):
very pleasant, told me about the office and hoped that
we would get to work together again. I ended up
not taking that job, and last I heard, she did
quite well in her fellowship and it had done quite
well in her jobs after fellowship, and now a chief
medical examiner somewhere, So even though she had fainted, she
was able to recover and do well for herself and
stay in the field of forensics. I've worked with other
people who have struggled with smells or some of the
(15:10):
sites that we see, and they still enjoy being forensic pathologists,
even though occasionally they have to throw up. And that
brings us to the end of the episode. I hope
you learned something like always eat before you see an
autopsy and I hope you were entertained until the next
(15:30):
time
Today's episode does not have a discussion of the death
of an individual, so if you find that upsetting, unfortunately
this is not the episode for you. Welcome and may
have the law with their host, Doctor Kinder crowns today's episode.
(00:23):
I have the vapors. In every morgue or medical examiner's
office that I have worked in, there are always tours
or student observers that come in to learn about forensic
pathology or autopsies in general, and they do this by
watching an autopsy. The observers are usually medical students, but
they can be lawyers, law students, police cadets, forensic majors
(00:44):
from a local college, kind of any one that has
a need to see an autopsy as part of their education.
I was once one of these observers. Way back in
nineteen eighty four, when I was in ninth grade, I
had an opportunity to spend a day with a local
medical examiner. This was because the medical examiner also taught
at the local university in my hometown, and my dad
(01:05):
was also a professor at the same university in the
same department that the medical examiner taught in, and they
were friends. My dad had told me about forensic pathology,
and I was very interested in learning more about it.
This was before the Internet. Of course, I checked out
books to learn more, but there wasn't a lot of
easily obtainable information. My dad thought practical experience was better
(01:27):
than just reading books, and he talked to the medical
examiner about letting me come in and watch cases for
the day. Nowadays, we only allow college age students to
come watch cases, but this was forty years ago and
the rules were a little different back then. The day
I went to spend with the medical examiner was on
a Sunday. I had just finished throwing newspapers, which was
my job at the time, and my dad and I
(01:49):
drove across town to the medical Examiner's office. I couldn't
drive by myself yet because I had only just gotten
my learner's permit. We drove across town in our old
green Chevy Townsmen station wagon and he dropped me off
at the Medical Examiner's office. I hopped out of the
car and he told me to have fun, which looking
back on it was an odd thing to say, but
I didn't know until much later that my dad really
(02:10):
didn't know what he had dropped me off to go see.
Sure academically understood what medical examiners do and what they
were about, and how they performed autopsies, but he really
didn't understand the reality of what an autopsy entailed. And
I found this out much later, but that is for
another episode. The medical examiner's office itself was a small,
(02:31):
non ascript building that had a garage attached to it
that housed and repaired ambulances for the local hospitals. When
I went into the building, I was nervous but very
excited about what I was going to learn. No more books,
this was the real thing. I was greeted by the
autopsy technician. He was a big, burly guy with a
beard in a very odd sense of humor. He liked
(02:51):
to make a lot of jokes about vomit or vomiting.
He said to me, you ready, hope, y h your wheedies,
and he took me into the morgary, which was a small,
well lit, white room off the garage. The room had
an autopsy table in the middle of it and a
large drain in the middle of the floor, and that
was it, just a room with an autopsy table. Medical
(03:13):
examiner came in. He was an older, heavy set man,
kind of short. He had a big, booming voice in
large hands. He told me about the cases for the
day and showed me some X rays. Shortly after this,
the autopsy tech brought the body in, which was still
in a bodybag. Both the autopsy tech and medical examiner
were still in street clothes. All they had on was
an apron and some gloves. Nothing else. No head covers,
(03:37):
no masks, no eye covers. I guess back in the eighties,
no one was really worried about infectious disease. And I
just stood there in the clothes I arrived in and
they didn't offer me any ppe. The body bag was
unzipped and there was the first dead body I had
ever seen, And that was the moment my journey into
forensics began. The guy was in his early twenties and
(04:00):
what had happened to him was late the night before.
He had been drinking and was playing Russian Roulette and
he lost, which, oddly enough, is often what happens when
people play Russian Roulette. They transferred him from the gurney
and the body bag to the autopsy table, and when
they did this, he flopped around like a rag doll.
I could see the gunshot wound of his head. It
(04:20):
was a single through and through gunshot wound. There was
blood oozing from both the wounds, and he had raccoon eyes,
which many had had a Basler's skull fracture. Seeing the
dead body didn't throw me off. It was incredibly fascinating
to me. I asked a whole lot of questions that
were probably incredibly annoying, but the medical examiner and the
autopsy technician took it all in good stride and answered
all my questions. While they performed the autopsy, they removed
(04:43):
all the organs. I watched everything. I couldn't look away.
When the autopsy was over, I knew what I wanted
to do for a career, and I asked the medical
examiner what do I need to become a medical examiner
like you? And he said to me, very matter of factly, well,
you know, you got to finish high school, and then
you have to go to college, and then you have
to go to medical school and do a residency followed
by a sub specialization of forensic pathology. And he said,
(05:05):
it's going to take some time. From the age you're
at right now, it'll take about eighteen years to get
to be a forensic pathologist. That autopsy was all the
inspiration I needed, and eighteen years seemed like nothing. So
I knew what I was going to do for my career,
and I made it my goal to become a medical examiner.
And here I am today, forty years later, still working
in the field, and it has never become boring. Seeing
(05:26):
dead bodies has never bothered me, not at any point,
not from that first day to today. But I know
for others it can be quite upsetting. With every tour
group or visiting student, there is always the chance that
someone will have trouble dealing with what they're seeing. And
you could tell when someone was about to have trouble
during an autopsy there would be vague signs or stages
(05:47):
that they would go through. It would initially start when
the group would arrive at the morgue. Before the body
was brought out. There'd be nervous laughter, some odd questions,
the bad joke. There would always be someone that would
make a vomit comment or something along those lines, and
how nothing really bothers them. Once the body and the
body bag would be brought out, some people would stop
talking and they would start looking a little more nervous.
(06:08):
There would still be some odd questions, and when the
body bag was unzipped, they'd start with even more questions,
and then there'd be more nervous laughter and awkward statements
about the body. But you could always spot people that
were really upset. They would get quiet, they would start
moving further and further away from the body and trying
to look anywhere but at the body. They'd look at
the floor, the walls, the ceiling, anything except the body.
(06:32):
Problem was usually in the morgues that I've worked in,
there would be multiple other cases going on at the
same time, so really there was nowhere for them to hide.
Once the autopsy would start, of course you'd get the
complaints about the smell and questions of what do you
do to get over it, which is actually you just
breathe through your mouth and don't leave the room, because
as soon as you leave the room, your nose resets
and you have to start all over again. At some point,
(06:55):
the people that can't handle it reach a breaking point,
and when that point is reached, the excitement begins. Most
of them will just quietly leave and sit in the
hallway and stay out there for the entire time. Either
sitting quietly or crying. But sometimes he would get runners.
And these are the people that just suddenly freak out
or bolt and run right out of the room. One
time we had an FBI agent who bolted when we
(07:16):
opened the body bag, and he ran right into the
metal door that exited the mor When he collided with
that large metal door, he fell backwards, hitting his head
on the floor, knocking him unconscious. He had to be
taken to the hospital, and at the hospital they found
he had given himself a skull fracture and a subduralhymorrhid.
The non runner ones are the ones that try to
stick it out and put on a brave face and
act like they can make it. They start showing symptoms.
(07:39):
First they become quiet, and at some point they start
sweating and complaining. They might start swaying, and then the
color drains out of their face and their skin gets
this kind of pale gray or green coloration, and that's
when they reached the crossroads. They're going to either vomit
or faint. The vomitors, to me, were the worst because
I hate the noise of someone wretching. I also hate
(08:00):
being someone vomit. I am a sympathetic vomitter. When someone vomits,
I feel like I have to vomit, so I always
struggle when someone throws up in the morgue. I try
and look away and try not to pay attention to
what they're doing, and focus on what I'm doing to
get past my urge to vomit. Usually, when someone would
vomit in the morgue, there wouldn't be much wretching. They
would usually just suddenly vomit, but no warning whatsoever into
(08:22):
either the biohazard as wasteboxes or if we're lucky, as sink.
But sometimes they'd vomit directly on the floor and the
autopsy technicians would have to clean it up. If they
didn't vomit, the other pathway was fainting. Fainting is far
more common than vomiting, partially because people don't eat before
they go on the tour because they're afraid they're going
to vomit, and this actually makes them more prone to fainting.
(08:44):
The low blood sugar, the epinephrin dump from seeing the
dead body, or from the fear of the dead body
all culminate in this perfect storm for fainting. So just
so you know if you're ever going to take a
tour and watch an autopsy, make sure you eat first,
because it's better to vomit than to faint, because colapsing
to the morg floor during an autopsy is not the
most clean environment for you to lay down in, and
(09:05):
when you get up, he might actually have bodily fluids
or brain or something like that stuck to your clothing
that you won't realize is there, and you might get
into your car with that when you go home. If
I spotted a fainter before they would collapse, I would
usually offer them a chair or try to get them
to step out or something, because you just don't want
someone to faint in the more. You don't want them
to be embarrassed, and there's the liability of them falling,
(09:26):
of course, But often the fainters would argue that they
could stay because they could handle it, but you could
tell they really couldn't handle it, and you try to
keep an eye on him. One time in Chicago, there
was a group of police cadets that had come for
a tour to watch an autopsy. It was probably a
group about twenty males and females. There was one he
was a tall, muscular ball cadet. He kept talking and
(09:47):
boasting about he was ready for all this, and he
got even louder when the body bag appeared. While the
autopsy was going on, the cadets asked occasional questions, but
they weren't all that talkative. But this tall cadet was
really talking a big game about it and how none
of this was bothering him. I knew it was bothering him,
though you could tell it was starting to really get
to him. I asked him if he was okay, and
(10:07):
his response was better than you, doctor. So I continued
on and waited to see what would happen. And then
something occurred on the other side of the room at
one of the other autopsy tables, and all the cadets
turned at once. The doctor across the room had hit
a large blood filled cyst, which suddenly exploded and covered
her with blood and puss. The cadets all made a
(10:28):
collective gasp, except the bald guy. He had quickly moved
to the back of the pack, actually now standing right
by me, and I looked over just at that moment,
and I noticed his knees were beginning to buckle, and
I asked him, are you okay? He didn't respond, and
then all of a sudden, he started falling to the floor.
I was covered in blood myself up to my elbows
and I had blood all over my ppe from doing
(10:50):
an autopsy, but he was right next to me, so
I shoulder checked him into the wall, holding him up.
He was completely out of it. I yelled out for help,
and the other cadets turned her and grabbed him quickly
and put him in a chair. They helped him regain consciousness,
all while they were unmercifully teasing him. The instructor came
over helped him to his feet. He was a little woozy,
(11:10):
not talking, but he was able to walk, and the
instructor took him out of the room. I didn't see
him again for the rest of the day, but I
am sure to this day he still made fun of
for fainting at the morgue. There have been others that
had passed out as well. Some of nose dived into
the hazardous waistboxes, others fell right on the floor. There
was another incident of fainting that we'll close out today's
episode with. It was a resident who was rotating at
(11:33):
our office It was her first day at the Medical
Examiner's office and her first day in the autopsy room.
She was very excited. She wanted to go into forensic
pathology and she had been assigned to work with one
of the other doctors. We'll call him doctor S. Doctor
S and I worked in the same word across from
each other. The days started like any other day. Doctor
S and the President had their first case's body out
(11:54):
and doctor S was going over the case information with
the resident. I walked past them and headed into the
cooler to find my cases for the day. I didn't
think much of it as about midway into the cooler
when doctor S started yelling for help. I walked back
quickly to see what was going on. And when I
got in the room, the body bag had been open
and there was a new deceiton lying on the gurney.
(12:15):
The resident was lying on the floor being tended to
by another doctor we'll call her doctor L. Doctor S
said she just suddenly fainted, and when she fainted, she
hid her face on the edge of the gurney and
then collapsed to the floor. Doctor L used to be
a nurse, and let's just say she knew better how
to handle this than any of us. Doctor L had
propped the resident's feet up on a chair and had
(12:37):
somehow gotten a pillow to put under her head. I
don't know where that pillow came from, and I don't
ever think I want to know. She was fanning the resident,
checking her vitals, and eventually a resident came back to consciousness.
Doctor S and doctor L helped her get back to
her feet, and doctor S recommended that maybe she'd take
the rest of the day off and get checked out
at a doctor's office. Resident refused, she wanted to see.
(13:00):
She went and cleaned herself up. She came back and
proceeded with the day, stayed with doctor asked for the
rest of the day, watched every autopsyne and didn't have
any more trouble. She continued for the rest of the
month and did very well on her rotation. A year later,
I was working in another office that I would work
at on the weekends. I was a corner's office at
one of the counties outside of Cook County in Illinois.
(13:21):
I would work there on the weekends only when I
had time away from Chicago, and when I would come
in there to do an autopsy. Is there would be
an autopsy tech and a sheriff's officer who was there
to take pictures. When I showed up that day, the
sheriff's officer said the autopsy tech was running late. No problem,
I said, and I just started proceeding getting things ready
to start the autopsy by myself. The autopsy tech showed
(13:44):
up and it turned out to be that resident. She
had gotten a job at the corner's office to be
an autopsy tech on the weekends while she was finishing
her residency. And when I saw her, the first thing
I said is, hey, you're the fainter. And a sheriff's
officer looked up and said, whoa what Wait a second,
you fainted. She looked at the sheriff's officer and myself
very disgustedly, and she said to me, with a very
(14:05):
irritated tone in her voice, yes, yes, I fainted that
one time, but I haven't fainted again. And I said, oh, well, sorry,
it just took me back. You know it was you.
You're the one that fainted at that time, and she said, yes, yes,
I understand that I fainted. And she said, but I
haven't fainted again, and we can just not talk about it. Anymore,
(14:26):
and I agreed she did a great job. She was
a very good autopsy technician. I never worked with her
again from that point on. She did really well in
her residency program and completed it, and years later I
met her again when I was on a job interviewed
at another medical examiner's office, and she just happened to
be the forensic fello. This time I knew her name
and I didn't call her the fainter, and she was
(14:48):
very pleasant, told me about the office and hoped that
we would get to work together again. I ended up
not taking that job, and last I heard, she did
quite well in her fellowship and it had done quite
well in her jobs after fellowship, and now a chief
medical examiner somewhere, So even though she had fainted, she
was able to recover and do well for herself and
stay in the field of forensics. I've worked with other
people who have struggled with smells or some of the
(15:10):
sites that we see, and they still enjoy being forensic pathologists,
even though occasionally they have to throw up. And that
brings us to the end of the episode. I hope
you learned something like always eat before you see an
autopsy and I hope you were entertained until the next
(15:30):
time
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