Pathology with Dr. Priya | A Routine Repair. A Live Wire. A Fatal Shock. - Zone 7 with Sheryl McCollum

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Y'all Welcome to pathology with doctor Pria. Y'all know what
Monday's mean, and today we are going to get an
education because there's some things about.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
This particular autopsy.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
I am quite certain that y'all do not know. So
Doctor Pria, welcome, Welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Thank you, Monday Rendezvous.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
It is our Monday rendezvous.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
I tell you, you know, I want you to talk
about electrocutions because I think there's a lot of people
that don't really understand what all goes into them.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
But if you would.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Start however, you start the autopsy. But I know, for me,
at a crime scene, whether we know something is an
accident or we're not sure if it was accident or intentional,
I look at their hands first because I'm.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
Just looking to see if there's any of those blisters.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
That's what I'm looking for, right, So, you know, electrocution,
we have sort of high voltage and low voltage, if
you will, low voltage being more of our homes, and
high voltage being like in the cases I've had that
are more like work accidents as well. We think about
power lines that run like around our towns and our

(01:23):
houses and businesses. Right, So there's sort of two different,
you know, areas that we can encounter electricity. Sadly, I
think you know, more of my cases have been the
like work related accidents, less commonly homicides. But you know, never, ever, ever, right, ever,

(01:46):
ever go in and just assume. And so we're going
in with you to the crime scene, looking at the surroundings,
does it make sense? Did someone set them up right?
Does it look staged in any way? But what's happening
is the person who is deceased is sort of connecting
the circuit right, so they are there's going to be

(02:09):
an entry point and an exit point for the electrical
arc and that's what the blisters are. So sometimes it
enters the hands, exits the foot, you know, it can
exit the side of the body. It can be the
arm that touches. I mean, it just really depends on
the scenario. I've seen it in variety of places. But
any kind of electricity it is fast and hot, so

(02:34):
you're going to get these almost I mean burn blisters.
You know, it's basically burns and the skin blisters up
in the area very irregularly. It can be just the
tip of a finger, it can be the whole hand,
and then you have to see sort of where it
exits through off. I've seen like rubber boots burned. I've

(02:56):
seen jeans burned. You know, it really depends on the
the scenario.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
And the blisters can look unusual, can't they like white
on the outside and dark on the inside.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
It can be very dark. It can be almost like
frozen looking.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
It's just such high electricity that it's not like a
stove burn or what we normally are expecting from the
burn because it's so fast moving.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
And then you have the heart, and you talk about
the heart all the time, but in this situation, anything
that's gonna disrupt that rhythm, I mean, that can be
fatal exactly.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
So when we're thinking about it, it's the hands, aren't
or the entry and exit points aren't what kill you, right,
Meaning those are just manifestations that the body was subjected
to this high voltage, right, so that there was an electrocution.
But getting burned, you know, in your hand and foot
or thigh in a small area isn't usually what's killing you.

(04:01):
It's the it's the shock of the electricity through the
body that's disrupting the heart. Okay, so you have to
think about it all of us who are living at
some point probably either had an EKG, which is electro cardiogram,
whether that's one page printed out at the doctor's office
in the back of an ambulance, or even at surgery.

(04:23):
Right when you have surgery, it's a constant monitoring. And
so when they say rhythm strip, that's your heart rhythm,
the bump bump, bump bump that we're hearing as we
sit here, or a doctor listens with the stethoscope. Okay,
that is that the electrical signal through the heart that
helps the heart pump, and that's why we're alive. Now,

(04:46):
once we're dead, there's no electricity running through and basically
this jolt of electricity short circuits the heart. You die
on the spot. There's no like delay. Really, it's so
quick that this huge charge jolts the heart and basically
flat lines and that's it.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
And then you know when you're doing the autopsy, can
you tail whether or not the muscles that control your
breathing were affected.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Well, there wouldn't be burned in any way. What happens
is I mean, just like when the body shuts down,
immediately it's all affected. Does that make sense? Like it's
there's nothing that's going to be moving now internally, there
may not be a ton of burning. If you will,
you know, people think, oh my god, there's this huge

(05:37):
charge that's going to roll through the body. I'm going
to see blistering inside. That's not the case. Okay, So
what we're going to see is the inside can look
actually pretty pristine from the incident. Now, if the person
has other issues, that they'll be there, right, And that
does bring up a fact that different people are going

(05:57):
to be susceptible to different levels of stress, right, Like
sometimes a young person may survive a small like jolt
of electricity, whereas someone with a heart problem, who's maybe
more advanced in age, right, has a weaker heart. It's
not going to take as much to interrupt their rhythm

(06:20):
or give them an arrhythmia. Does that make sense, Maybe
they're already in and out of an arrhythmia. So we
have to make sure that, you know, what is the
context of the person going up and doing this kind
of work or tinkering in a weekend warrioring the house.
I mean, you know, and I'll tell you a horrible,

(06:40):
horrible story that is very personal. My brother, my husband,
my husband, my dad's younger brother. Excuse me. He was
an electric the chief engineer for a car factory in India,
and he was supposed to repair electrical lines and the
junior engineer was supposed to have turned off the electricity

(07:01):
but did not. And when he went to repair this,
we got an emergency call that my younger uncle, youngest
uncle had burns over thirty to forty percent of his body,
like severe third degree burns and he may not make it.
So I remember going with my dad to India to

(07:23):
see him. I mean it was months too, but I mean,
this is the kind of fatal I mean, I honestly
don't know how he survived. It was because he was
otherwise healthy. But the massive charge you can imagine from
a car factory, right like the spark, the burns, it
was just immense. I mean, he has permanent scarring from that.

(07:47):
But the fact that he survived that is a miracle.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
That is a miracle, but that is horrifying.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
It took almost a year, I think for him to recover,
and you know he was relative younger in his forties,
so and I mean, you know, there's miracles in medicine.
And I still to this day. The more I think
about it, the more I think that he's you know,
it was miraculous that he survived. But you know, people
don't always realize what's hot, right, Like you can look

(08:16):
at the there's no looking at a line or looking
at a telephone, you know, like the pole or and
the big thing. I want to bring up his storms,
like we're supposed to have a cold snap, snow's coming,
you know, there's hurricanes. When you see a power line down, like,
don't be a hero to go and pick it up.
We've had really bad trees like this year come down

(08:38):
in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood's a little bit more established
where the trees are larger. But then again, larger trees
sometimes they're less stable, you know, if their roots die
or a branch is older and it falls, and then
you know, there are maybe two or three incidents this year.
Oh the power lines are down, the powers out, and
people start looking. And if you see a lot I

(09:00):
have powerline dangling, people will be like, oh, it's in
the middle of the road. By that time the electric
company comes, that's going to be an hour from now.
Please don't touch it. This is not an appropriate way.
I mean, you can cone it off and then call,
but by no means should a lay person go and
touch it because it is a live wire. And I

(09:20):
know it sounds like almost demeaning to say, like, ye know,
of course, doc, I'm not going to touch that. But
I've seen people do crazy things trying to be like
a hometown hero and they don't, you know, it's sort
of like a desperate moment. They're trying to just make
life happen and fix things. It's just so scary to
see people interact with these things unknowingly right like, oh

(09:43):
it's broken, it must be it must not be working,
you know, or make a bad assumption, and that that's tragic.
The other thing I've seen is like now that we're
coming into like winter season and people are doing yard work,
I've seen people get these branch cutters and to trim trees.
We're in the New England where the trees are really
beautiful right now, things are changing colors, but leaves have

(10:06):
not fallen yet. Okay, so they're all you know, some
of them have, but we're not bare naked yet. So
people are really getting ready for the winter. And then
the saddest thing is when people cut through a wire
thinking it's a tree branch. I've had cases like this.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
And that's what you know, and your body's just a conduit.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
I mean, you're you're just sitting right there, you know,
and within a blink of an eye, you know, people
around you, it may take them time to even understand
what happened.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Right thick trees, this metal tree cutter thing that even
David has one, My husband has one, and I'm always like,
what are you doing? Because you know it's the weekend
warriors sometimes that get themselves into the most trouble. I'm
just going to go cut down a branch, you know,
Oh it's in the way. But if it's in the
way and you don't see what else is in the way,

(11:01):
it can easily be like mistake. It's a deadly mistake.
And so let it, you know, let the professionals handle it.
There's some things, you know, people ask me, how have
has my job like changed how I live? Well, let
me tell you, I don't let David do these massive
projects by himself. You know, we can worry it, whether

(11:23):
it be the roofing or the tree work, even electrical
work on the house. Like you think you're gonna install
a fan until the wrong wires are connected.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
Well, Doc, I gotta tell you, you know, Walt, I live
on a lake. Every year there's somebody that goes, oh,
the light's out underneath, and they go to fix it,
and they're in the water, fooling with electricity, and they
think it's just a quick fix, like a light bulb
in the house, and it's not.

Speaker 3 (11:52):
I get nausea to just think about that, you know.
But there's even silly things. Okay, let's bring it back home.
Can't have your cell phone near the water if you're
taking a shower or a bath, Like, right, I feel
like we're so connected to our phones. That's an electrical device, right,
Like if it falls in, if it's plugged in, you know,

(12:13):
think about hair like curling irons. Like there's all these
things we have around us that I think is taken
for granted almost right, that and we have those outlets
those like was it ground fault interrupter, current interrupter, the
GFCI water resistant outlets or whatever. But nothing is fool proof.
Resistant doesn't mean not at all, right, yeah, not at

(12:36):
all impossible. Resistant is not.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
Impossible, that's right. Well, you mentioned it earlier when you
mentioned you had seen rubber boots melt. A lot of
people say, well, I've got rubber soles, I've got you know,
tiers on the car that's going to stop it. And
it doesn't, not at all.

Speaker 3 (12:54):
You know. And that's that I think anytime we do
what we consider regular tasks, you know, we just have
to be There's even more electronics around us now than
I grew up with, you know, and so like simple tasks.
Maybe even in the kitchen, I have a iPad going
a toaster, I mean, who knows. And you know what's
crazy is we got a fancy oven and had to

(13:15):
return it because David got shocked from this fancy new
electrical panel. It was hot for some reason. So the
way this panel was wired, it was short, it was
shorting out and every time he touched it he got zapped.
And let me tell you, this was my dream oven.
But we you know, we returned it real quick. I'm
not going to put the brand or anything out there.
I think it was a fluke, you know. And they

(13:36):
were very good about the customer service part of it,
but I was like, this is not supposed to spark.
And so we now have, you know, more complex electronics
and appliances. You just never know. Anytime we have fancy
things like more things can go wrong and not to
scare people, but just use caution. Right. It's not blind
abandonment that oh I can just like do things and

(13:58):
it won't affect me or it'll be fine, you know.
So I think sometimes we have things, you know, we
have our phones and our iPads and all this, and
we're cooking, and not everything is set up for that
right to have this much overload. And the other thing
is also like it's not directly electrocution, but people plug
too many things into like the same outlet or the

(14:21):
same safety strip, right, and then they overload it and
then that can short out and even cause an electrical fire.
Right because people are like, whoa, this is easy and
we're coming to that time of year.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
And with flooding, I mean all of a sudden, a
straight lamp is going to be lifted up and could
be floating with an electric current.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
So between like even outside or inside your house, like
you have to be careful. We're getting into decorating season,
we're getting into fires, We're getting into hosting people, right,
more more parties, more everything. But that puts a strain
on things, like you don't even realize what can go awry,
you know. So I think that's what as we get

(15:04):
you know, ready for at least up here colder months, right,
all these new seasonal activities. And that's why I say
the weekend Warriors can sometimes be the most troublesome. It's
not you know, not the professionals per se.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
And you know, when you're doing the autopsy, can you
see the internal damage like to the organs and you
can literally see where it went from A to Z.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
You can see it primarily in the skin, maybe the muscles. Otherwise,
really we don't see the electrical short circuit if you will,
of the heart. You know, the heart can look I
mean it's basically a immediate stop, like an immediate heart attack.
But you know, you don't see the blockages in the vessels.
So other than that, it can look pretty normal inside.

(15:51):
You just know that it is it was a sudden
drop or a sudden you know effect. Now, the interesting
thing is if you look at the skin under the microscope,
you can see the high heat sort of changes. You
can see streaming nuclei like the burns have a characteristic

(16:11):
look because of the electric current passing through it. So
that can give you a clue as well, you know.
But definitely there's very characteristic changes in the skin regardless
of the person's complexion. Okay, I don't want to say
that you can only see it in lighter complexion people.
I've seen it in a whole array where the skin

(16:31):
blisters or becomes gray and ashen, you know. So really
that's really important. And nothing is also fool proof, like
the rubber boots or you know, are not going to
necessilly ground.

Speaker 1 (16:45):
You have you seen those videos dog of like lightning
hitting a tree. Yes, I thought that's what would happen
inside your body, that it would.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Just be like a burn. Well it's split, but a
charred burn, like you would see the pattern. So that's
fascinating to me.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah, not inside, but the charring and that zipping arc
you see like on at least like two points of
the body, like the hands and the feet, or like
the hands and the thigh or whatever is touching. Yeah,
you will see entry and what's called exit points of
the arc of the current. But yeah, we won't see

(17:25):
as much splitting or frying of the organs per se.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Well, Doc, I'll tell you people do need to be
careful hanging those Christmas lights, like you say, cutting things down,
moving things around thinking they're gonna solve a quick problem,
and touch something when they're in water or something's wet.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
So well, and I there's very few things that I
you know, I hate a lot of caution. I'm a
very cautious person. But there is absolutely no way know
how my husband is installing any electrical anything in my
house because I'm like, you know, it is a great
a professional. You know, everything needs to be double checked,

(18:06):
and so I am big on hire the professionals be
safe and don't be sorry. So I want everybody to
be safe, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
After listening to this, Amen, Well, doc, thank you so
much and we will talk to you next week own
Pathology with doctor Pria.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
All right, till next time, Bye bye,

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Pathology with Dr. Priya | A Routine Repair. A Live Wire. A Fatal Shock.

Episode Transcript

Host

Sheryl McCollum

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