IN THE ARMS OF ECSTASY

In an extract from his new memoir, pathologist Dr Cynric Temple-Camp describes one of his more unusual cases and how he did a good deed

Pathology is a little like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, “You never know what you’re going to get.” I found the apparently infinite variety that the job threw up a source of constant amazement. By the time I had been working there for a couple of years, I realised that I actually loved getting to the mortuary in the morning.

Bruce Scott was always at work long before I arrived to make sure that everything was perfect. One morning he came into my office and dropped a bundle of forms on my desk.

“Got another dead in the arms of ecstasy, Doc. You get them from time to time.” “What do you mean?” “You know. In the arms of ecstasy.” He slapped the Pol-47 — Police Form 47, which is filled out by the attending constable and contains all the relevant facts about the scene of death, the person and his life. It’s usually on the strength of terse account contained in a Pol-47 that the coroner decides whether a post-mortem is required. I picked it up. “The deceased is 63 years old and has no medical history of note. He breakfasted this morning on porridge and saveloys, but refused the saveloys because he said they were hard and gristly.”

I sighed. Most Pol-47s contained these strangely irrelevant facts. What could you expect when they were taken by the most junior constable sent to the scene? If the family thought a piece of information was important, who was a young cop to judge? I read on. “He then left for work as usual. He is a salesman who travels a round of customers, selling hygienic merchandise to do with hand washing. A call was received at the Central Police Station at 11.30 hrs. The call was made by the owner of a local entertainment centre. The deceased appears to have succumbed while exercising, according to staff. There are no suspicious circumstances at the scene. His GP has been contacted and since he has not seen the deceased for three years is not prepared to sign the death certificate. The deceased man’s car was legally parked down the road at a metered park. There was still 35 minutes to run on the meter.”

That is all there was. I looked up at Bruce, perplexed. “I don’t get it. So what on earth are the arms of ecstasy?” Bruce rolled his eyes. “Entertainment centre. It was a bloody knockingshop, wasn’t it? A whore-house. ‘Died while exercising’, my arse!”

Bruce was right. There was always a trickle of males who had passed away in the act of intercourse, usually legitimately with their wives, but surprisingly often while with a prostitute. I supposed it was the high blood pressure that went with the heightened excitement that did it.

Death in the arms of ecstasy. Some men might joke that it is a desirable way to go, but it could lead to major complications if they end up unexpectedly dead in the wrong place and in the wrong bed.

I knew what to look for, so the autopsy was brief. The answer, as expected, was in the coronary arteries, the only blood supply to the heart. I found a 60 per cent occlusion of the left coronary artery and a 90 per cent occlusion of the left anterior descending artery, the usual source

of lethal heart attacks. There was a smidgen of haemorrhage underneath a fatty plaque in the artery. In his excitement, he had bled into one of the lesions in his artery. A bit of bleeding was all it took to close off the badly blocked artery completely.

I had seen it several times before. It was a pity, because he wasn’t overweight, wasn’t a diabetic and the blockage was quite localised. If it had been picked up earlier — yesterday morning, say — he could have had surgery. With a coronary artery bypass or a stent inserted across the fatty plaque, his might have lived for a while yet.

When I got back to my office, there was an invitation from Doug Brew to come up to the police station at 6 o’clock for drinks. There was a bar upstairs where the CIB members could relax and socialise without being out in the public eye. I accepted with pleasure, and settled down to write my preliminary opinion on the deceased’s cause of death for the coroner. Graham Hubbard, the Palmerston North coroner, liked to have an advance note so he could have a chat with the family and tell them what had happened before his finding was handed down at the inquest.

Barely a quarter of an hour later, the hospital receptionist called to say there was a policeman wanting to see me.

I was surprised. We had a hospital policeman who often came to see me with information, requests or more often just to gossip about what was happening around the hospital and in the Manawatu. He was a fount of information and I usually knew what cases were likely to come my way even before the coroner had been informed. This couldn’t be that man.