Being home now, there are too many reasons to count why I wish I could just go back to Belize. Some of the things I experienced during my time abroad have been stuck in my head, perpetually replaying. One of those such moments was the autopsy we performed as a class. It was a thursday, close to the weekend break of the first week. We were called out of our normal routine to investigate a random unknown cause of death for two healthy young cows over in mennonite country. We drove over to the beautiful mountain country in the Cayo district, the six of us students, our TA, the doctor and his brother. The drive was rather long, almost an hour but rather pleasant with the country scenery humming by through the rickety van windows. We arrived at a modest farm and were immediately intercepted by a lone man in his upper fifties. He explained to the doctor what he knew of the cow and we gathered up to examine the body. The other cows seemed to gather up in the furthest corner of the pen. There she laid, alone and covered in flies. The ground around her rather unperturbed. The farmer followed us out to tell the doctor that he believes this cow contracted rabies, but doc knew better. That was what I really admired about him. His air of confidence mixed with a strong armory of knowledge. It seemed almost to be lifted from a movie or a CSI episode. The doctor looked at the cow from several angles, took a minute to think and scanned the region. He then smiled and gave a confident smile and asked, "Did any of your neighbors use pesticides today?" The farmer seemed annoyed at the question as if it would yield nothing relevant. "I believe the guy over there did", as he pointed to a neighboring property. "Then thats your answer", stated doc, with that candid confidence. He deduced that the cow was poisoned from organic phosphate, a common pesticide carried by the wind over into the property when sprayed by a neighbor. The doc used the wind direction coupled with the blood from the cows nose and the rather unmoved ground beneath the cow to support his conclusion. If it had been rabies, the cow would have not bled the way it did, and it would have moved rabidly around the yard crushing the grass and ground beneath it. I remember thinking, thats what I want to do. Use the evidence around me to come up with an answer of my own to a problem. We continued over to the second cow. This one was much more ominous. The class ducked one by one under an electric fence into a broad still hilly yard. There was a clearing, flat and expanse, all emptied but a single mass dead center. Ill never forget walking up to the body, the only solid mass divided sharply against the common green background. This cow lay stiff, flat against the ground and cold to the touch as if every last spec of life has been long gone from the body.This one too, thought to be a victim of rabies. But the doc almost immediately denounced the disease from the blood stale around the mouth, eyes and anus. Without warning, he drew his machete and cut open into the body above the shoulder and seemed dissapointed. He then ordered me to flip the body. I heaved it over and he cut into the other shoulder and smiled. "There it is class", as he pointed to a patch of blackened flesh on the shoulder. "Blackleg", he stated. Thats what killed this cow. The cow was killed from a bacteria that would secrete toxic wastes that accumulate in muscle and cause necrotic black tissue to form. We headed back to the van and off to resume our normal class routine and I frantically wrote every note of the day down in a book that remained closed until just now. It was days like this that make me wish I could just go back to that time that never seems to last as long as we want.
- Andrew R.
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