The following comments were made by ‘medical professionals’ while acting as Attending Physicians or Residents on a forum managed by the Student Doctor Network. This organization’s mission is to “help students become doctors… from high school to practice.” This is how these future ‘doctors’ feel about prenatal human life…
Anyone get tripped on these...
Im talking especially the big ones, where you can actually make out facial expressions like they knew they were being hacked the hell up (im serious). I almost went bonkers once over one, that is some scary crap. Am I the only pathologist who freaks when a 0.5cm eyeball comes rolling out of a bag and stares right at you…..I know we are thinking this, just no one in pathology is talking about it.
Totally trippy man...
We get a fair number of fragmented fetuses from abortion procedures and they come in a container with formalin. The fact that they’re all hacked up is disturbing to begin with. Of course, there is the whole eyeball issue which freaks me out as well. Echoing in my mind is the sound effects from the movie Psycho… Reeee Reeee Reeee Reeee Reeee Reeee!
One incident really freaked me...
…it was a boy fetus, at least 3+ pounds, around 24+ weeks. It sat decomposing because the rest of the staff was AFRAID of it, Im not joking. Then the chief of staff told me to deal with it because I was the FNG (f-kcin new guy) so I went to work. Pulled out 2 well formed arms and then the torso, headless. The head was at the bottom of the container, when I pulled it, he had this expression of such utter horror it flipped me wayyyy out, my PA saw it and ran, literally left work and went on disability (Im serious here). It was like a headless screaming baby, like it had been born at least for a split second to realize it was screwed and let out one agonal yelp.
Eyeballs are the specimen that freaks me out the most...
Cutting into an eye makes me squeal. I remember doing it the first time in anatomy lab and I felt like I was sticking a knife into my own eye.
I chow down on White Castle while my lab assistant stacks all the baby body parts...
…limb amputations and reduction mastectomies into the incinerator. It has almost a Nazi concentration camp feel to it all sometimes, one of my assistants today tried to joke about this leg and aborted fetus we were transporting, I snapped “have some f-ing respect!!” then started laughing too, you cant help it. Its so unbelievably insane. Nothing med school prepares you for.
Anyone else hear the story about the 1200 aborted fetuses...
…that were found during a seismic refit underneath a California hospital?? Turned out the company they were hiring to incinerate them was just stuffing em under the foundation. When the hospital admin found out they got pissed and had the pathology staff yanking molded abortions out for days.
In any case, no, abortions don't freak me out whatsoever...
Maybe if a twin Intrauterine fetal death case showed up and one was giving the other a Dirty Sanchez, well, perhaps then I would take pause. Until then, no amount of googly eyeballs or tiny jaws dislocated “mid-scream” does anything to humanize the little sacks of neverweres for me. There are quite a few things that I find disturbing, but few of them spill directly out of the womb.
Before med school I worked as a autopsy tech/path lackey...
…and one of my jobs was dumping the old surg path specimens to drain off the formalin and then bag the specs for incineration. Sounds unpleasant but I actually enjoyed it cause I could listen to NPR and not be bugged. Anyhow, I would get going fast just dumping specimen after specimen in the sink, until one day I dumped a whole intact fetus, approximately 25 weeks old into the sink. Closest I ever came to fainting. So completely unexpected after seeing gallbladders and colons day after day.
If the abortion was elective then obviously an autopsy makes no flippin sense...
But I dont make the rules I follow em. You would almost never see anything related to an elective abortion in terms of pathology, except the bill!
Actually, I've never personally had a problem with those kinds of autopsies...
Frankly, the thing that bugs me the most, is that they’re so darn small, so it takes a long time to do a proper autopsy.
Remember, these comments were made by people in training to preserve human life. Abortion is undermining the value of that life. The legalized destruction of the most vulnerable and defenseless members of our human family is turning our culture inside out. Even doctors are losing their humanity.
Take action to restore what we have so tragically lost.
