From the Bookshelf

The subtitle of this book is, in par t, “The Making of a Medical Examiner.”

You might be thinking this is a fascinating book about the birth of this newspaper. So sorry to disappoint you. This is a book about the other kind of medical examiner, the kind, as the author puts it, “who cuts up dead people.”

It’s a unique calling. After all, most people get into medicine to prevent death, or at least delay it. Not everyone is cut out to handle a patient caseload that is approximately 100% dead on arrival.

Still, it’s an important and necessary specialty, and judging by decades of popular TV shows focusing on forensic medicine — both drama and reality — it is one many of us are fascinated by.

In the case of our author, Dr. Judy Melinek, surgery was her chosen career, but it soon became apparent that a life of surgery would be, well, a life of surgery: mere 12-hour shifts were a rare luxury. More than once she wielded a scalpel for 60 straight hours, relieved only by a few brief stolen naps. 108-hour weeks were the norm, although 130-hour weeks were not uncommon. Her schedule included exactly one day off every two weeks. engaging, and the doctors seemed to have stable lives.”

Something had to give, and it did. She quit. But not before fainting at the end of a 36-hour shift and on another occasion performing surgeries while enduring a full-blown case of flu.

In fact, the director of the pathology residence program at UCLA had tried to recruit her during her last year of medical school. Maybe she could direct her to a pathology position somewhere that would accept a failed surgery resident.

“Can you start here, in July?” the director asked.

Raised in the Bronx, Melinek left New York for UCLA and the promised pathology residency, then returned to New York City to ply her new trade.

This book details her two years of training as a newly minted forensic pathologist. Was this finally her ticket to the stable life she had abandoned surgery to find?

Sort of. Except that two months into the job September 11 happened. And then the ant hrax attacks. And then American Airlines flight 587...and then...

Taking stock of things in unemployment, she thought about the pathology rotation she had enjoyed so much in medical school: “The science was fascinating, the cases

MEDICALEXAMINER

+ + AUGUSTA’S MOST INFECTIOUS NEWSPAPER do. Why do you think I m so good at it?

You really need to work on your procrastination.

No, what do they say? Well, you know what they say...

The early bird gets the worm.

by Dan Pearson

I ve noticed owls seem to be doing just fine.