A Coroner Office: "I See Dead People"

DAY IN THE LIFE

Pizza delivery guy: college drunks, football fanatics, and endless toppings.

Stock broker: money, lots of coke, wild parties... (source: Wolf on Wall Street)

However, over at the county corner's office you get the don't-want-to-imagine-ables.

This Washington coroner's office is located next to a juvenile detention center. Before then it was crammed in an old Pizza Hut shop. I thumbed through giant old record books, the only documentation of deaths in the county before computers came along. I spoke with the staff in a room no different than any break room. But soon I was led into the autopsy room.

The Scene:

1. It looked right out of CSI:Miami. Everything silver or white with bright overhead lighting.

2. Bleach. Bleach. Bleach. Just smacks you in the nose. Better than the alternative.

3. Autopsy table, two large refrigerators, emergency shower, family viewing area, and a smaller fridge.

Expenses:

1. Their new autopsy table costs about $10K. It includes a ventilation system that sucks away the air around the body to keep fumes from leaving the room or overwhelming pathologists.

2. The county uses the coroner system which means our county coroner is elected and can have a background completely unrelated to forensic science. When a death occurs, our coroner calls in a certified forensic pathologist.

The Refrigerators:

1. He almost walked me into the wrong one with a person who had died over the weekend. Not cool.

2. The other refrigerator had a gurney covered in boxes. Boxes of the cremated and unclaimed remains of people who had died in the last three years. After three years the remains are buried in a designated area in a local cemetery. If a relative shows up years later the county can pay to have the grave excavated to reconnect the family members.

3. The smaller fridge holds blood samples of every body. A lot of the toxicology reports in the area come back positive for meth. If a body is involved in a homicide they keep an extra vile just in case for police/prosecution purposes.

Autopsy:

1. Each autopsy can take a couple hours. The more gun shot wounds the longer the process.

2. They do put the sticks in the wounds to then determine bullet trajectory (Too much info?)

3. They weigh every organ... I didn't care to ask more than that.

4. Eyes, skin and bone can possibly still be donated within about 24 hrs after death.

5. They record every death for that year on a whiteboard:

      -City -Vehicular or not -Homicides -Drownings -Suicides

*And as you can imagine some of the numbers change depending on a later ruling.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed dinner before reading this.

Joyfully,

Molly