Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner
Judy Melinek
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Staying alive, as it turns out, is mostly common sense.”
“There are no emergency autopsies,” another resident pointed out to me. “Your patients never complain. They don’t page you during dinner. And they’ll still be dead tomorrow.”
“When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses--not zebras.' In other words, most things are exactly what they seem, and the simplest answer is usually the right one.”
“Oh, yes—that thing about house cats is true. Your faithful golden retriever might sit next to your dead body for days, starving, but the tabby won’t. Your pet cat will eat you right away, with no qualms at all. Like any opportunistic scavenger, it will start with your eyeballs and lips.”
“Mine is a gruesome job, but for a scientist with a love for the mechanics of the human body, a great one.”
“To confront death every day, to see it yourself, you have to love the living.”
“Don't deny reality for the sake of objectivity.”
“Opening Yulia Koroleva's uterus was the most heartbreaking thing I'd ever done. When I saw that perfect fetus, when I took it in my hands, my vision clouded over with tears and my professional reserve fell away...[he] had fully formed organs each in its correct location, without any abnormalities. The foot length told me he had been nineteen weeks old, exactly halfway through gestation. I returned him to his mother's body, to be buried with her.”
“Now I found myself at a windy crime scene in the middle of Manhattan rush hour, gore on the sidewalk, blue lights and yellow tape, a crowd of gawkers, grim cops, and coworkers who kept using the word “clusterfuck.” I was hooked.”
“I enjoyed the intellectual rigor and scientific challenge of death investigation. Everyone there, from new students to the most senior doctors, seemed happy, eager to learn, and professionally challenged. None of the medical examiners had cots in their offices. “There are no emergency autopsies,” another resident pointed out to me. “Your patients never complain. They don’t page you during dinner. And they’ll still be dead tomorrow.”
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Book Keywords:
science, memoir, love, death, work, dying, doctors, medicine, health, morticians, forensics
