The main Vancouver Police Station very handily abuts Downtown Eastside, an area full of unsavoury characters; vagrants; and drug addled persons. The latter are literally a dying breed: last year an astounding thousand Vancouverites died of drug overdoses (and not just in the seedy parts of town). The drug dealers are cutting everything with fentanyl – even dope! – apparently because it’s cheap and easy to make – although killing off your customers doesn’t sound like good business practice to me.
We visited the Vancouver police museum when we were there last week. I highly recommend it, even though we very nearly didn’t make it in because S was trying to pull the door instead of push – something that could happen to anyone really. It’s all slightly amateur and homemade, although the weaponry on display was very impressive as you might imagine. The best part, though, was that the building used to be the forensic path lab and mortuary, where autopsies were done. The autopsy room was hardly changed, with it’s stainless steel slabs that could be sluiced down into the sink; a wall of big refrigerated stainless steel drawers to put the bodies in; and even a bullet hole in the window (some crim trying to do a hit on the police surgeon, according to legend). They also had a collection of grisly exhibits that used to be taken round as an educational travelling road show to schools and such – pickled body parts with gunshot wounds, cancers in various organs, etc.
If I’d known forensic pathology was this easy I would have done it myself! There’s even an arrow to guide you. Lot’s of money in pathology these days, although mostly in lab tests rather than cutting up dead people.
This one is more in my line of work – not that I’m usually intubating an isolated larynx like this. I think even the most enthusiastic surgeon would probably realise this patient was beyond help. Don’t try to inhale your broken denture, boys and girls – it won’t end well.