The post-mortem!
1031 Words
EPISODE 08
- What did my wife die of, Doctor Gbênounkoun?
- For the moment, I will not be able to tell you anything without an autopsy test being performed on the body, your majesty. I will call upon a colleague of mine, who is a forensic scientist, to help us do the test to find out what caused the queen's death. Just a moment! I'll call him to see.
- All right.
The king, with his hands behind his back, walked down the corridor, waiting for Dr. Gbênounkoun to call in his friend, the forensic pathologist, to perform the clinical autopsy on the queen's corpse. Half an hour later, the forensic doctor finally arrived with a team of doctors carrying equipment to perform the tests. They greeted the king upon their arrival and then received permission to access the queen's corpse to perform the various tests. The purpose of this series of examinations by the forensic doctor is to investigate and discover the true causes of the queen's death before the king decides how the queen's funeral will be organized according to royal requirements. The coroner on his way after a few minutes of observation and some so-called preliminary examinations, he comes out with the gloves on his fingers to go and discuss face to face with the king:
- Your Majesty, at the moment, we do not have all the elements we need to carry out the examinations to know what caused the death of the queen. We need to go to the laboratory for hygienic and ethical reasons. Unfortunately, we can't work on your wife's body outside the laboratory. We will therefore need your permission to move your wife's body from the palace to the laboratory in order to work on her corpse to be able to establish a proper diagnosis of the queen's death. The autopsy that we are going to do will be the medical one, because that is what is done in the case of natural death.
- Doctor, I have listened to you. But I don't want people to be alerted that something has happened at the palace, because if the Queen's body has to be taken out of here to the hospital, you will certainly send an ambulance to the palace.
- Absolutely your majesty. It's for health security purposes and to prevent the body from becoming infected. It must be protected.
- I understand your concern, but I don't want to draw attention to my palace. I don't want people close to the palace to suspect that there is a problem. There are things that happen in the palace and those outside should not know about them until a certain time.
- You are right, but this is the only possibility to avoid contamination, in case your wife is sick or has an undisclosed infection before she dies.
- This is not possible, doctor. My wife did not show any signs of illness! She was in good health. You can ask the woman with my wife there. They were together and she was fine. I have cars here that can take her from here to your laboratory. By the way, I have a concern about the conduct of this supposed medical autopsy examination. How will it go? I would like to understand better if it is still important to use this method.
- In advance, your majesty, I would like to reassure you that the purpose of the medical autopsy is to clarify all clinical diagnoses, to evaluate the response to treatment and to search for the cause of natural death. This is what we call in medical jargon, quality control. This quality control is therefore crucial for the improvement of our clinical services, but also in the case of innovative interventions such as transplants, minimally invasive surgery, interventional radiology, etc. This will be of great importance to us in the case of resistant infections or new pathologies. Now, as far as the medical autopsy process is concerned, it is simple. Let me explain. When we talk about autopsy generally, on some points, it can be compared to a surgical operation.
- Is that so?
- Yes, your majesty.
- I had no idea.
- So, as I explained to you earlier, the autopsy in general can be compared to a surgical operation. It normally lasts a few hours for interventions on the body. It requires a thorough external and internal examination of the body. It is for the thorough internal examination that we must go to the laboratory, because the autopsy must be conducted with the greatest respect for the deceased. We must make incisions that are called discreet. These incisions must be hidden by clothing. Then there are organs that will be removed for inspection with the naked eye. As you already know, an autopsy is an analysis of all the organs of the body, including the brain. A fragment of each organ is removed. The heart will be removed for a thorough and systematic analysis. If you object to these removals, we will not remove the brain, and we will stop the process if you wish.
We will also have to take small tissue fragments after evaluation by a pathologist like me, following inspection with the naked eye, for further examination under the microscope. It is after all this that we will try to answer the questions formulated by the family and the clinical doctors. For example, is there a metabolic disease, an infection, or even a malignant tumor? Is there a neurological disease, Alzheimer's disease? What is the cause of death? Is there a hereditary disease?
- That's a lot of stuff. I thought it was something pretty simple to quickly move on.
- It's a process that takes hours, days, months as I said before, depending on each level of intervention during the autopsy. It all depends on the results we get after the first examinations. It should also be remembered that a genetic examination can also be performed, as well as a search for pollutants or occupational diseases.
- This is downright desecration of the body, doctor! No, it's better not to go down that road…
- Writer
