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thessalian...Well, that was surreal.
Phone rings; gentleman with a fairly heavy accent telling me that his relative, a patient of Dr Slater's, died recently. "I want to know," he said to me, "how long she will be in the mortuary at [hospital] because we are planning for the funeral".
Well, firstly, I always thought that mortuaries were where the body gets prettied up for the funeral. When it's in a hospital, and it's predominantly used for storage and autopsy, don't you normally just call it a morgue?
Anyway, that isn't the point. If you want to know how long the coroner's going to hold the body, ask the coroner. Call the morgue. Don't call the oncologist whose job it was to help the patient have a longer, better quality life. When they're dead, there's not much more a doctor can do for them, and following them to the bloody morgue is not part of the job description.
Thing is, I wasn't even sure I understood the question at first, and there is no delicate way to say, "I'm sorry to sound insensitive, but I have to make sure I understand; your relative died and you'd like to know when the morgue will release her remains for the funeral". There is also no delicate way to say, "I'm sorry, we don't have that information; call the morgue".
Sometimes this job is reeeeeeeeeeeeally fucking depressing. And that's coming from someone who even thinks of herself as occasionally morbid.
Phone rings; gentleman with a fairly heavy accent telling me that his relative, a patient of Dr Slater's, died recently. "I want to know," he said to me, "how long she will be in the mortuary at [hospital] because we are planning for the funeral".
Well, firstly, I always thought that mortuaries were where the body gets prettied up for the funeral. When it's in a hospital, and it's predominantly used for storage and autopsy, don't you normally just call it a morgue?
Anyway, that isn't the point. If you want to know how long the coroner's going to hold the body, ask the coroner. Call the morgue. Don't call the oncologist whose job it was to help the patient have a longer, better quality life. When they're dead, there's not much more a doctor can do for them, and following them to the bloody morgue is not part of the job description.
Thing is, I wasn't even sure I understood the question at first, and there is no delicate way to say, "I'm sorry to sound insensitive, but I have to make sure I understand; your relative died and you'd like to know when the morgue will release her remains for the funeral". There is also no delicate way to say, "I'm sorry, we don't have that information; call the morgue".
Sometimes this job is reeeeeeeeeeeeally fucking depressing. And that's coming from someone who even thinks of herself as occasionally morbid.