A Note To the editor, From The Editor

Your questions are answered to the best of my NON-M.D. ability in the comments section of "Ed's Dead Golfer".

There's Somethin' Ya Don't Hear Every Day

So, today we all come into work and there is something outside the building, hidden somehwere, that stinks. Probably a raccoon - and I'll find out soon enough. For some weird reason, during my tenure here, I have had to bag up and discard two dead raccoons from the premises.

Of course, no one notices until they get stinky - then it's like, "Hey - what died?"

So, my compadre who works in the front office asked me earlier, "Hey - can you take a walk around outside and see what's dead?"

I don't typically have to take a walk outside to do that.

Ah, the delightful ironies of this job...

UPDATE: It was one of our many feral "Morgue Kitties" that live in a neighboring wooded area. It's no great loss. Feral cats kill lots of birds, and the birds around here in SW Florida have it hard enough as it is.

And, yes, I took pictures.

The dead Morgue Kitty will have a more dignified disposition than most - it'll be cremated along with the "Bio" waste. Hey, I mean, it's better than vultures, right?

Ed's Dead Golfer

No, I am not describing the last several months' INactivity on the weblog. Middle-Grey is NOT dead. It was just resting after a long squawk.

Let's get back to it.

It was asked of me, in the comments section some time ago, what was the final [hypothetical] cause and manner of death for "Mr. Hole-In-One-Massachussetts".

Let's review real quick:

"For this little series, however, we'll use a simple case - say a person who was complaining of chest pain on the golf course, was seen collapsing by his golf partners, was given CPR by bystanders until EMS arrived, was transported to the hospital, and was subsequently pronounced dead in the E/R."

As with most cases, our [hypothetical] autopsy revealed exactly what we expected. The [hypothetical] Death Certifcate read "Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease" for cause of death and "Natural" for manner of death.

First off, let's assume that Mr. Hole-In-One-Massachussetts isn't young. When I drive by any of the roughly one zillion golf courses in this town, I don't see many people under the age of, say, 60 - and I'm being NICE here. That's a whole lotta white hair under those Titleist(TM) caps.

So, with that said, let's look back at the little bit of [hypothetical] medical and social history for our dead golfer, and how it often plays out at autopsy. Those many moons ago, it was said that:

"He quit smoking ten years ago, but was a pack per day smoker for many years before that."

Uh-huh. And you know what? The damage that particular habit does isn't really all that reversible, you know. We're not using Star Trek technology quite yet, folks - and heart disease isn't something that gets better with age. Fact is, Mr. Hole-In-One-Massachussetts had long-standing heart disease. An examination of the [hypothetical] heart revealed:

(1) An abnormal weight: [hypothetically] 600 grams. Simply put, muscles get big when they are worked hard. You don't want your heart working hard.

(2) A focal area of scarring in the heart wall (excised and placed into the gross specimen cup): Hm. Seemed that on the day he complained about bad indigestion after bowling, pizza, and beer with his pals, he was having a heart attack. A couple of Rolaids(TM) relieved the symptoms, but masked the cause. Hey, it happens - believe me.

(3) An enlarged left ventricle (left ventricular hypertrophy): seems he had a side of hypertension to go with that previous M.I.

(4) A 70% narrowing of the anterior descending branch of the left coronary artery (LAD) - a section of it goes into the formalin for microscopic examination later.

Further, [hypothetically], the lower fourth of the aorta had the consistency of a fresh corn flake. Uh-huh. Atherosclerosis. Not good.

/end ridiculously abridged [hypothetical] autopsy findings

Now you say, "...but wait, Ed! Didn't you say "the decedent had a check-up before coming down to Florida, and the doctor said that everything was okay"?

Yep. And if you had any idea how many people keel over after getting these "clean bills of health" from their doctors, you'd be really surprised. It happens all the time, which sucks, of course. Families who have just been told that their loved one is hale and hearty don't like burying them a week later but, believe me, it happens.

The fact is, our dead golfer's doctor only did a "Physical" on him, not an extensive battery of cardiac testing (for example, a stress test with injected dyes - or whatever). A physical exam done by the family physician can only reveal so much. It's no one's fault. It just is what it is. Doctors aren't magicians, you know.

So, there you go. Cause and manner of death for Mr. Hole-In-One-Massachussetts. Proven beyond a shadow of a doubt via autopsy. The next day, the photographs are uploaded onto the hard drive, and a CD of the images goes into the file.

The police report is added to the file after it is finalized by the appropriate agency.

The histology (microscope) slides are read.

The toxicology report comes back some months later and is negative for everything but a couple of beers out on the links.

The report is finalized and a copy is made available to the police agency involved.

The fact is, most autopsies only prove what we already know (or have surmised) about a decedent and terminal event. Ascertaining cause and manner of death is mostly a matter of eliminating other possibilities, Sherlock Holmes-style.

It's the curveballs that keep this job "interesting" in the Chinese curse sense of the word.

Thanks for asking, Swamp4me. And thanks for getting me to sit down and bang out an entry after these long months.



Image: The Bleeding Head of Arnold Palmer by Ed E. O'Path. Concept c/o The Church of the SubGenius. All due praise and respect to Dobbs, Stang, and Sterno et al.

Flesh Fly

Sarcophaga sp. - all too common as a tag-along with our, uh, "less-fresh" bodies.

Still - in the long view, we may not find this family of insects (Sarcophagidae) to be appetizing or lovely in any conventional sense, but they are most definitely necessary. We'd all be wading through a slimy miasma of gooey dead stuff if it wasn't for the many extremely busy little decomposers out there in the world.

At least say "Sorry" before you swat!

Deremstes spp.

An unknown Dermestes species (above)

and...





































































D. maculatus

Admittedly, this is a genus that could be considered a pest in the office - especially in the room where we keep skeletal remains. Their diet consists of dead animal skin, and some stored foods. Hopefully, if you have any of these in your house, they are feeding on one OR the other, and not somehow enjoying the benefits of both. YUK. However, we never see these beetles around the office except when a new skeleton or nearly skeletonized person arrives for examination. Then, the inevitable hitchhikers let their presence be known for the next few days. Stragglers can often be seen wandering across the morgue floor, as these two were.

By the way, the genus gets its name from the Greek root Derma- for "skin" and the Latin -este for "eat/consume".

Ommatius sp.

This robber fly, a species in the genus Ommatius, was but one of three found on the same day. All of them were dead on the breezeway floor. One of them (pictured below) was pretty banged up - either from flying into our lights or from scavenger activity. I can't be sure which it was.

I can't do anything about the security lights being left on all night (even I understand the necessity of this). However, I am hoping to stop the loss of beneficial insects like these to slapdash pesticide application. Our office exterminator hasn't been around yet this month, but I will be sure to tell her that there are two areas of the office that don't need to have poison put down - namely the entrance area to the office building and the breezeway.

Here are the other two robber flies found that day, just for completion's sake:



































I have many other insect images like these to upload, and - not to put too fine a point on it - not one species so far is a pest species, with the possible exception of a couple of dermestid beetles collected from inside the office. I still believe that they were stow-aways, however, and are not part of an existing population here.

Perhaps it can be said that there are no pest species here because the insecticide application is working the way it should, but I am dubious of that point of view for now. Obviously we get plenty of insect traffic here. Why it is only beneficial and non-troublesome species that are doomed when they pass through the breezeway or the office entrance is something I want to explore further.

As always, thanks for reading:

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Mount Laurel, New Jersey
Plano, Texas
Atlanta, Georgia
"Connecticut"
Cape Coral, Florida
Miami, FL
Cleveland, OH
Orlando, FL
WREN

Now - if I could just get you guys to leave a comment instead of just lurking, we'd be golden. ;)

My Toes Are Sore From Tapping, My Thumbs Are Sore From Twiddling

or How Long Does It Take? pt. 2

So, if the actual, physical autopsy usually only takes a couple of hours, why does it sometimes take so long to get an autopsy report out?

That's a complicated question, and I'll attempt to settle it. Beware - this could get long. But you're used to that by now, right?

An autopsy report doesn't become public record, and it is not furnished to families, news agencies, or even law enforcement agencies until cause and manner of death are definitively established. This is not to be confused with a lack of information-sharing, however, as the investigation - whether by law enforcement, the medical examiner staff, or both - is often just as important as the autopsy. This is a point that gets confused by lots of people, especially with the advent of popular TV shows that glamorize the autopsy. Even the reality-based television shows seem to fall into this trap - perhaps because watching an investigator on the telephone isn't nearly as exciting as watching a doctor remove a liver or a bullet.

Besides being in constant communication with law enforcement agencies and/or hospitals and doctors' offices, the medical examiner staff makes every attempt to keep families in the loop as to the progress of a case. This is especially true when there are further questions that need to be asked about a decedent's medical history. A common question asked of families, for example, is where did the decedent have a particular medical procedure done if it is not in our local hospitals' records?

In short, the more complicated a case becomes on the investigations end, the longer it will take to finalize the cause and manner of death. Subsequent investigation after an autopsy is done is not unusual at all. Bear in mind, as well, that further questions can be raised during the autopsy procedure, and it's not unusual to have something unexpected come up that will need to be inquired about later!

Finally, and very importantly, there are times that the medical examiner's office cannot release information until an outside investigation by law enforcement has been completed. To do otherwise may unfairly taint the investigation in progress, especially if there is a suspect at large.

So goes investigation. It's a complicated and nuanced game.

Another factor that creates a delay between an autopsy and a finalized report is toxicology. This is a big one here in southwest Florida, where people seem to really, really like their drugs. Don't believe me? Try this on for size: the medical examiner's office in Miami-Dade does all of our toxicology, as well as the testing for many other medical examiner's offices throughout Florida. The staff there have taken to jokingly referring to Naples as "Methadone City".

(This, by the way, is a bit of a misnomer, since most of those methadone-related toxicology cases hail from well outside the city limits of Naples proper.)

A very complicated set of tests is run on samples sent to the Miami-Dade medical examiner's toxicology lab. First off, the lab runs a stripped down "yes-no" battery of examinations on the samples provided. If there is a "yes" answer found in their first run of tests, they then do a more detailed group of tests to see how much of any given substance is in each originally submitted tissue and blood sample. In this way, a holistic picture of the distribution of a given intoxicant (or group of intoxicants) in a decedent's body can be ascertained.

Gastric contents, for example, may contain either much more or much less of an intoxicant than what is present in blood, ocular fluid, liver tissue, etc. As the intoxicant is metabolized by the body, its concentrations change throughout the tissues. Distribution of intoxicants matters, especially when the cause and manner of death hinge on the toxicology findings.

With a clear picture of distribution, a doctor can better surmise roughly (I stress - roughly) how long a decedent lived after ingesting a particular drug or combination of drugs. A doctor can also get a clearer idea of a decedent's intent when the ingestion of the intoxicant(s) took place. A dose well past what could be called the "recreational threshold" can support a suspicion of suicide. Likewise, a dose well below said threshold can be likened more to an accidental fatal intoxication, and so on.

All of the testing mentioned above takes time - to the tune of several months from the day I send the specimens to the lab to the day the results come back to us over the fax. This sounds like an efficiency problem until you consider that the very same battery of tests is being done on Miami's cases, our cases, plus several other judicial districts in the state. Everybody waits their turn, with very few exceptions.

Toxicology is a big hurdle, but there are others that can also delay the finalization of an autopsy report. Sometimes, on very complicated or high-stakes cases, the doctors here will ask for a specialist's assistance. This may involve an outside agency to aid in a decedent's identification, such as the Maples Center for Forensic Medicine at the University of Florida. Perhaps a consult from a local cardiopathologist is necessary, or an examination of the decedent's brain by a neuropathologist. In other cases, the doctor may have to wait for a report from a forensic odontologist regarding bite mark evidence. There are many disciplines in forensic science, and no one pathologist can be a master at them all. But using a consultant does add time to the investigation, and it does create a delay in finalizing the autopsy report. It simply can't be helped.

Then there's Chaos, our old friend.

Entropy and chaos also play a role in any investigation. The author and philosopher Robert Anton Wilson described this phenomenon in his book The Illuminatus! Trilogy (written with Robert Shea). In the book, a character named Markoff Chaney acted as a "random element" in all manner of plots, conspiracies and intrigues. Every medical examiner's office has its own invisible Markoff Chaneys, diligently laboring in the name of chaos and entropy, day in and day out. Mr. Chaney's work may take the form of a new piece of information that defies all previously operating theories of an investigation. A catastrophic failure of a necessary piece of equipment may grind the office's operations to a halt as well. Then, most commonly, there's always the lurking possibility of a new, difficult case coming through the door. You just never know.

What is of pivotal importance today may be suddenly, even catastrophically, shunted to the back burner based on what tomorrow brings. Especially in Florida, inclement weather may shut down operations, or (much worse) flood the office with bodies and calls. Forget the weather - in our office, even a car accident that kills four people will keep the place humming at full speed for a solid three days.

On a much more common and mundane level, however, an employee or their family members may get sick, vacations may be taken, etc. No one is perfect, either, and filing errors can and do occur. Yes, there are many ways that Mr. Chaney can make his presence known, and they can all lead to unexpected and unfortunate delays in the release of information.

So...

This little list of factors affecting the speed of a finalized autopsy report is by no means comprehensive, but I do hope that it illuminates a bit of the complexity of this business. A death investigation is an intricate interweaving of information, often gleaned by more than one agency over time. A finalized cause and manner of death is done by process of elimination, more than anything else. Rather than looking at a case with tunnel-vision, it is part of a medical examiner's job to anticipate future questions and rule out even remotely possible alternatives to the underlying operational hypothesis in any given case. At its heart, this job is all about questions and provable answers - not conjecture, and most definitely not "Isn't it obvious...?"

We've seen it before - the car "accident" turned proven suicide, the accidental "fall" off of a rooftop turned proven suicide, the alleged accidental drug overdose ruled as proven cardiac disease in the face of a (surprisingly) negative toxicology screen - the list could go on and on.

This is a high-stakes business where one misstep can sink a criminal investigation or besmirch a family's good name. One rushed conclusion can lead to criminal charges being leveled against the wrong person, or allow a guilty person to walk away from a crime without paying for it. Insurance settlements may be jeopardized. Wrongful death suits may be filed when inappropriate, or ruined when they have legal substance behind them and deserve to be heard in a civil court.

As citizens, we all deserve the most thorough investigation possible into circumstances of any death. Neither you, nor I, nor anyone else you pass on the street deserves any less.



Image: The Difficult Journey by Ed E. O'Path. Digital photograph of personalized old-Norse runic meditation. After-effects done with Adobe Photoshop. 2007.

What Would Pandora Do?

You know, sometimes you just don't want to open things you receive here at the morgue - even when you know the labels with which they are adorned have nothing to do with any of the office's cases, per se.












This box was no exception. The descriptor on the box has nothing to do with any of our cases. What are "they" trying to tell me? Is it a warning? Is it a pointedly vague and unsettling inventory of the contents?

Is there a disfigured gnome hidden inside the box? Why didn't anyone call it in first? Am I going to have to give him a case number?

Oh, the tension!












Whew! Thank God it was only some incoming histology slides contained in a re-used box. The descriptor must have applied to some very unfortunate person out there, somewhere...

Or something.

(Shrugs)

Just one more tiny addition to the long list of unusual packages we send and receive here.

How Long Does It Take?

Other members of the office staff and I have noticed a peculiar trend over the last several weeks. On several occasions recently we have fielded questions or dispelled myths, with family members and even the media, related to how long an autopsy takes. Increasingly, when dealing with the public, we have been hearing about concerns that the "autopsy" takes weeks, or even months to complete. This simple, semantic slip-up is misleading, and deserves clarification.

I am hopeful that this short series will help to eradicate some of the common misconceptions about how long an autopsy takes, versus how long a complete death investigation takes. The two are very different.

First of all, an autopsy is but one of many steps involved in determining cause and manner of death. As a matter of course, this office does not do autopsies without gleaning as much information as possible about the decedent beforehand. The information we need before beginning an autopsy may come from family members, or a law enforcement agency, or a hospital, the decedent's physician(s), etc.

Of obvious import is a thorough scene investigation by a law enforcement agency, if the decedent did not die in a hospital or other medical facility under the care of a doctor. Hollywood has made us painfully aware of this, and it's a bit of a no-brainer, so I'll move on.

Sometimes, we assume jurisdiction on cases where the decedent simply didn't like going to the doctor's office and, therefore, has no known medical history. There are many reasons why some people don't like doctors. They may be afraid of being examined for psychological or phobic reasons. Others don't want to be told to stop drinking and/or smoking; in general, they are reluctant to change habits that they know are detrimental to their health. In short, the reasons for not seeking medical attention proactively, or even reactively, are tailored to the individual. This is when getting information from the decedent's family about their habits can be of utmost importance.

Other decedents (thankfully) have medical history with one or more of the local clinics and hospitals. As part of a death investigation, the Medical Examiner's office has access to these records. If the decedent had a gall bladder removed, the doctors here want to know about it. If the appendix was removed, or the uterus, or a testicle, or a fingertip, the doctors want to know about it. If the decedent had a habit of shopping around at the local emergency rooms, looking for an unsuspecting doctor to croak out a prescription for painkillers, the doctors want to know about it. A solid medical history on a decedent, when it's available, can be just as valuable as scene information.

So - the initial investigation as outlined above is step one. No autopsy is really complete without an investigation into the decedent's background that is as thorough as possible.

There is a law of diminishing returns with this rule, however. At some point, the autopsy must commence, even if records are not currently available. This becomes an issue on weekends, especially, when the investigative staff does not have easy access to the local hospitals' medical records. A body that comes into the office on a Friday night can't wait around 'til Monday morning for attention. Other information, from law enforcement or family members may be readily available, but sometimes those medical records simply need to go on the back burner until the office is back to full-staff on Monday.

Most Medical Examiner cases are relatively straightforward. Very few cases are anything but what they seem initially. The cases that aren't what they seemed at the beginning of an investigation should be the subject of other posts entirely.

For this little series, however, we'll use a simple case - say a person who was complaining of chest pain on the golf course, was seen collapsing by his golf partners, was given CPR by bystanders until EMS arrived, was transported to the hospital, and was subsequently pronounced dead in the E/R.

(cue a shift to present tense)

The E/R doctor notifies the M.E. investigator on-call, and the death investigation gets underway. The hospital finds out from the wife that she and the decedent were visiting from Massachusetts, and his only attending physician is up north. The E/R doctor is looking to bow out of the whole situation because she can only guess what the cause of death would be, and a guess isn't good enough for a death certificate. The information above is given to the investigator.

In short order, the investigator ascertains that the decedent is a Medical Examiner case.

Upon assuming jurisdiction of the body, the investigator gathers up any locally available medical records and speaks with family members about consent for autopsy, how to make funeral arrangements, etc. Sometimes this information can be gathered before the body even arrives at the Medical Examiner's office. It just depends.

The conversation with the decedent's understandably distraught wife yields a phone number for the doctor up north. The wife has little additional information, however, stating that the decedent had a check-up before coming down to Florida, and the doctor said that everything was okay. In addition, the decedent took no medications, just vitamins. He quit smoking ten years ago, but was a pack per day smoker for many years before that. He was only a moderate social drinker.

A subsequent conversation with the decedent's doctor confirms all of this, and the doctor adds that he has no idea why this man suddenly collapsed and died on the golf course. According to the doctor, the decedent was in fine shape.

With no further information available, an autopsy will need to be done.

While the staff in the "front of the house" (a restaurant term - you'll start to see these quite a bit here...) is compiling the investigative information and speaking with family members about the office's involvement, the crew in the "back of the house" are getting the body ready for autopsy. This includes a very detailed battery of photographs, and (at minimum) taking a set of fingerprints, recording the decedent's height and weight, etc. I have done cases with as few as 10 photos and as many as several hundred. It just depends on the nature of the case.

For the sake of this post, let's go ahead and start the autopsy clock at this point - when the body comes out of the cooler and is being documented photographically and diagrammatically.

The times below are given for both photographer/techs working together. Times are significantly longer when it is only one person doing the job and the "tandem" aspect of the work is no longer in play. Times are also significantly longer in "involved" cases wherein the documentation of evidence significant to a criminal or wrongful death investigation becomes pivotal.

Remember, for illustrative purposes here, this is a simple, bare-bones, stripped-down case.

(There are two puns in the previous sentence)

- Photographs of the body "as-is", clothed, with jewelry, medical intervention, etc: 1 minute
- Removal of jewelry, clothing, medical intervention, etc: 3-4 minutes
- Verifying and signing for inventory of clothing, jewelry, property, etc: 1 minute
- Cleaning debris, grass clippings, soil, fire ants, etc from body: 5 minutes
- Photographing cleaned body without clothing, topside (including "I.D." photo): 1 minute
- Photographing same, both lateral views: 2 minutes
- Turning body over, cleaning body and preparing it for back photographs: 2 minutes
- Back photographs: 1 minute
- Turning body back over and situating it appropriately in the body bag: 1 minute
- Fingerprints and measuring height of decedent: 4 minutes
- Paperwork and forms (can be done while the other tech is doing the fingerprints): 3 minutes

Total to get body ready for autopsy: +/- 20 minutes

When everything is ready, as outlined above, the doctor is called back to the morgue to commence with diagramming the body's external surface (front, back, and sides). On a simple case, this only takes about five minutes.

Total time so far: 25 minutes

When the doctor is ready, the technician places a wooden block under the decedent's shoulder blades to elevate the chest cavity. The doctor then makes a long Y-shaped incision, removes the chest plate using shears, and the decedent's vital organs are removed and weighed (heart, both lungs, both kidneys, liver, spleen, brain). The adrenals and testicles (or uterus, tubes, and ovaries), prostate gland and bladder, stomach, neck structures, and bowel are also removed. This process is called the evisceration.

After the evisceration, the autopsy commences. The organs are dissected and examined grossly, meaning with the doctor's unaided eyes. Tissue samples are taken and preserved in formalin (often samples of the vital organs above, plus a section of stomach and esophagus, sections of the adrenal glands, testicles, the appendix, and etc). Other tissues from the organs mentioned above are cut into small pieces and placed into hinged plastic cages which will be sent out for microscopic slides. Toxicology samples are taken as well (blood from the femoral vein, if possible, urine, bile, ocular fluid, gastric contents).

All of the samples and specimens taken are labeled and put away, either on the specimen shelf (gross specimens) or in the refrigerator (toxicology). Typically, at this point, the doctor is finished and leaves the autopsy suite. The body is sewn up and placed back in the cooler to await pick-up from a funeral home.

Total time for autopsy: one hour
Total time so far, beginning to end: roughly 90 minutes

The longest, most involved autopsy takes a full day, maybe two. There have been a few times that I've done a really involved case that took two days. I haven't seen one take any longer than that - and I've seen a lot of autopsies since 2000, both here in Collier County and at the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's office.

The death investigation and completed autopsy report, however, can take much longer to finalize for release to the public.
Unlike the autopsy, a death investigation represents the totality of information gleaned and is a holistic survey of that information, taken to its logical scientifically demonstrable conclusion.

We'll deal with the specifics of this in short order. Yes, there will be a part 2. Yes, it will actually appear here soon. No, it will not just fall by the wayside as a task never finished. I promise.

As always, thank you for reading.



Image: Time Transfixed by Rene' Magritte. Oil on canvas. 1938.

thingfish23 Is Gone

Hi. It's me. I'm back.

Let me tell you a little story.

This weblog was started by Ed E. O'Path, who later vanished mysteriously. Ed's nebulous and (apparently) unnoticeable disappearance occurred right around the time that he decided to update Middle Grey with the newer version of Blogger's software. He realized only too late that this may have been a mistake.

Ed noticed that, suddenly, he had been erased from his own weblog. His name had somehow been replaced with the moniker of one thingfish23. To his horror, he saw that posts he had written himself were changed and accredited to thingfish23. Ed decided that this would not do, as thingfish23 writes elsewhere, and to a slightly different audience. The two authors were close friends, however.

Ed arranged a meeting, and agreed to buy the drinks.

After a lengthy sit-down between the two writers, a peaceable arrangement was reached. It was decided that this weblog would forevermore be Ed E. O'Path's domain. He was permitted to reclaim it with the simple caveat that thingfish23's name would be allowed to remain at the bottom of the previous posts. This stipulation stemmed from thingfish23's argument that he did, in fact, maintain Middle Grey during the period of Ed E. O'Path's unexplained absence.

No one ever accused either author of having a small ego.

And so it was that thingfish23 returned to his original mission at his original weblog. There were no hard feelings. The two authors remain close acquaintences to this day, with the typical stresses and annoyances creating occasional tension.

...

So - let's all bid thingfish23 a fond farewell, and let's wish Ed E. O'Path (hey, that's me!) a warm welcome back.

Thanks to all of you for your understanding and for your continued support.

(thingfish23, don't let the door hit you too hard on the way out, babe - and good job holding down the fort)