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02/27/2006: "The grace of God"
Everyone assumes that doctors, and pathologists in particular, are heartless and clinical, unaffected by what we see and what troubles afflict others.
And, to a certain extent, we are.
Today I had to perform a post mortem on a small girl, not yet three, who died in a freak accident. Carrying an oven-proof glass vegetable dish from the Sunday dinner table to the kitchen, she dropped it and it shattered. A single piece of glass flew upwards, into her neck. It made a longtitudinal slit, 20mm long and 20mm deep, in her neck, just to the left of midline. At the bottom of that slit - in perfect alignment with the laceration - ran her left external jugular artery.
She died from exsanguination before her parents could get her to casualty.
There but for the grace of God.
Keith McCarthy on Monday, February 27th 2006 @ 08:13 PM GMT [link]