My internship with the Chief Toxicologist for the Medical Examiner

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In college, I thought I wanted to be a forensic chemist. Key word, thought.

So, after hearing the Chief Toxicologist for the Medical Examiner’s Office for a neighboring county as a job fair or something similar, I approached him. I wanted to know with the summer coming up if there were any internship positions available as I was wrapping up my junior year of college. I wanted to try things out.

He had zero idea if there was anything available but promised to get back to me. And he did. I was welcome to come to the Toxicology lab for the medical examiner during the summer and be an intern.

There were some stipulations.

I couldn’t actually park there.

I had to park at a bank (with permission) across the freeway and walk over or they would come get me in the medical examiner’s van and return me at the end of the day. Please for a moment digest this. The Medical Examiner’s van. What do you think they transport in this van? Yes, you guessed it. Dead bodies, fluids and other things from crime scenes. Let me tell you. That van did not smell good. Imagine the worst smell you’ve ever smelled, multiply by one hundred and then add some sort of medical grade cleaning and preservative agent. 

I couldn’t actually do anything for the cases.

The job of the Toxicology lab for the Medical Examiner is to do all of the tests looking for drugs, sometimes medical conditions or other things that might be useful for determining the cause of death for a deceased person. Because I didn’t actually have a degree or any certificates or anything and these were all cases that could have legal ramifications, I couldn’t legally do any of the tests.

There was no pay.

Of course, it made sense that I wasn’t paid because I couldn’t do anything for the cases, but I did do other things. I cleaned out freezers full of samples that were no longer needed. I went through bags of evidence from medicine cabinets and got rid of things. We are talking really fun stuff. 

I still did it.

Despite all of these, I still went ahead with it. After all, I really wanted to be a forensic chemist and this was free experience/training.

The most exciting part of my internship? Reading the cases and learning how people died. Some people I’m sure should have been nominated for Darwin Awards. I know it’s not funny, and I shouldn’t laugh and it makes me a jerk, but some people do really stupid things and pay the ultimate price.

The second most exciting part? Going to court to see it all in action. I learned exactly what happens to your blood alcohol levels after consuming an alcoholic beverage. I also learned that the process of checking, even with blood, isn’t 100 percent accurate. If a crime happens at 2am and blood is drawn at 3am, you can’t infer what a blood alcohol level was at 2am because it could have been still on the way up, or going down. The results are catastrophic. DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE PEOPLE!!

I learned that sometimes when there is a death and the body isn’t discovered right away or there is a reason that blood can’t be drawn or used, the vitreous fluid from the eye can be used to look for alcohol and drugs. Yes, the fluid from the eye can be tested. 

If the body is decomposed even more? The liver gets homogenized. Guess what that means? Liver meet blender. Homogenization. Liquid liver for testing. The smell, oh the smell.

You know how I said the van smelled? Well, the lab had pretty much the same smell. You can’t get that smell out of your clothes or off of your skin. 

Photo courtesy of CBS ©2012 CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved.

When you see on a medical show or crime scene show that they put a sample into a machine, it spits it out and labels exactly what it is? That doesn’t happen. Or at least it didn’t happen over 10 years ago. And I suspect it still doesn’t. No, you have to test standards daily and compare to the standards and hope it’s a common match. It is like TV in pretty much zero ways. People aren’t walking around with heels with tight dresses and doing lab tests. They certainly don’t have their hair and makeup all done. 

The samples from the deceased had to be collected. If there was a high profile case, it had to be immediate. I was asked if I wanted to go retrieve the samples. Remember, I couldn’t actually get them, but I could go with the employees to go get them. Before we walked through the Medical Examiner’s door, the Chief Toxicologist, the one I met back on campus, said “do you get queasy?” “No. I don’t normally.” “Okay, good because there is an autopsy going on in there right now.”

{From my graduate school lab. Something similar to this was one small portion of equipment used in the lab.}

I thought I would be okay. I mean, I was okay. They didn’t have to clean anything up from me. 

But, the naked body of a man on the autopsy table with a giant Y cut across his chest an abdomen? I will never forget his face. 

The samples we were after? They were in a giant walk-in refrigerator. Not even thinking about it, we walked in. Guess what else they keep in a giant walk-in refrigerator in a Medical Examiner’s office? 

I’ll give you two guesses and the first doesn’t count. 

There aren’t little doors with a sliding table for each individual body like on TV. No. They are all in there together (covered of course).

The vision and the smells are just as strong today in my head as they were that one summer in 2002. I only went into the autopsy room one time, but it sure left a lasting impression.

At the end of the day, it wasn’t even all of the interesting things that I learned and saw that turned me off of the job. The bulk of it was actually incredibly boring and super repetitious lab work. I didn’t want to be sitting at a lab bench everyday doing the same thing, but I’m glad I had the chance to experience it first before going all in.