11.
Training in the Medical Examiners office. Elderly woman found dead by herself in her home. There was nothing suspicious so I was given the case. Took out all the organs, dissected everything, completely unremarkable. I cut through the larynx as the last step before I could clean up and finish the case and boom, giant piece of chicken lodged in her windpipe. Died choking on dinner.—u/fangboner
12.
Not a doctor, but a whole body scientific donation technician. I’m the person who dissects cadavers after they were donated.
We very commonly would get young cases, normally overdoses. Had a mid-thirties female, went to medical examiner prior to donation, but they only did an external evaluation.
I went to check her genitals to see if I could palpate a uterus, found a condom full of pills. Similar to most, the body became a crime scene and we couldn’t touch her.
When we finally were able to continue, they asked us to photograph the pills to send to the examiners office.
They were mostly Advil and Zyrtec, easily one of the weirdest things I’ve ever found.—u/LoveInMassDeath
13.
Not mine but a Doctor i used to work with. Back when he was in school, he would do his cadaver labs really late at night. (too many people during the day.) One time it was really late. Around 2am. He was listening to his lecture on his head phones and he saw the cadavers arm move/twitch. He thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Then he saw it again. Proceeded to run away in a panic.
He told a few of his classmates what happened but nobody believed him. Next day they had a group cadaver lab with the same cadaver. The arm twitched yet again. The professor did some digging and it turns out the patients pacemaker was still fully functional and occasionally fired, causing the arm twitch.
He was so relieved. He thought there was a zombie in there.—u/sumtinfunny
14.
Sheep farmer, I have to know how to do a necropsy for when something dies to know if it’s something that could spread. Had a ewe fall over dead after losing a ton of weight and after treating her for everything under the sun. She would gasp for air and struggled to breathe but antibiotics, steroids and anti-inflammatory drugs didn’t touch it. She finally passed away and I cut her open to see what the hell happened fully expecting to see her lungs riddled with sh-t.
Her heart was 5 times the normal size and hard as a river stone. My guess is she’d had that issue her whole life and it didn’t kill her until she was 2.—u/ElfPaladins13
15.
My dad used to perform autopsies.
His best story was that they were brought a body that has no real indication of any issues. After examining the body, the only thing of note was that there was blood coming out of the guys rectum. They begin the autopsy and the guys organs are completely liquidified and the body cavity is filled with lead shot. It became apparent really quickly that someone had shoved a shotgun up his ass and pulled the trigger.
This was in the 70’s and I still have to wonder what this guy did to piss someone off enough to get a shotgun up his ass.—u/Letspostsomething
16.
My friend had to do an autopsy on a baby. The dad claimed she died after rolling off a couch. My friend found that the kid was slammed against a hard surface multiple times. Dad eventually admitted he hit the baby against the wall after she wouldn’t stop crying.
My friend had to quit that job cause it was so taxing mentally.—u/phytoarch
17.
A body came in with a gunshot wound to the chest. There was no exit wound. They tried to locate the bullet during the autopsy. No success. They then did a whole scan (X-ray or CT) of the upper chest/abdomen/pelvis. No bullet.At that point someone said f-ck it lets scan the whole body.
Lo and behold the bullet was detected in the popliteal fossa (area behind the knee). It had embolized/traveled from the heart all the way down the arterial system to the knee where it got stuck in one of the narrower blood vessels.—u/Sergeant_Squirrel
18.
My grandmother had a massive stroke in her 30s that paralyzed her entire left side, and died in her 60s from a heart attack, but while doing the autopsy they found out she had bad lung cancer, but she never had any pain from it because it was in her left lung. She was a very heavy smoker, so it made sense, its just crazy that she had lung cancer and never knew.—u/tyoung89
19.
I’m a veterinarian and sometimes I do necropsy (basically autopsy for animals) and one of the more notable case involved a prized Wagyu cow that died mysteriously. Wagyu cows are very expensive to rear and fetch a good price at the slaughterhouse.
After cutting her open, I found metal wires extending from her stomach into her heart. It’s what we call ‘hardware disease’. Apparently the cow decided that eating metal wires for constructing fences was a good idea.
Normally the farmhands are quite good at keeping these hazards away from the inquisitive bovines but I guess slip up do happen from time to time—u/theunraveler1
20.
A guy that drank anti freeze because he was freezing to death and it actually worked for a bit before he died a terrible death from the anti freeze—u/ablesacat14