Episode 16: The Gross Room

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse Doc podcast. Giving nurses validation resources and hope. One episode at a time. Oh. Today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Nicole Angemi

I kind of walked into the grocer room, what it's called, and that's the anatomic pathology room where they dissect all the organs from surgeries. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I saw lots of cool stuff. Giant ovaries and breasts. And I just. I don't know. I just. Even though I was working as a cytotec, I just never really thought about if a person got a mastectomy, like where their boob went afterwards.

I think a lot of people don't think about that. And that's why I started writing about it, because I thought it was cool.

Cara Lunsford

Joining us today, Nicole and Jamie.

A woman who has managed to turn what many would deem makeup into an everyday conversation starter. Garnering over 1.7 million followers on Instagram and a successful.

Platform.

Called The Growth Room, she provides unfiltered insights into the fascinating world of pathology. She's a pathologist, assistant and educator and, dare I say, a disruptor in the field of science and medical education. I'm your host, Kara Lunsford, registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse Dotcom. Oh.

Well, hello.

There, Miss Nicole and Jamie. I'm so excited to, like, interview you today.

Nicole Angemi

I know. Me, too.

Cara Lunsford

I just love you so much.

Okay, so this day, Jeremy, first of all, I'm just, like, really excited that, A, I'm going to get to see you in person soon.

Nicole Angemi

I know we never met, which is weird.

Cara Lunsford

Which is so weird because we've talked on the phone for like, long periods of time over the years because it has been actually years. I think the very first time I ever did anything with you like a collab was when I had Holly Blue and I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to go to Mass and Jamie, I love her page.

I wonder if I can do some sort of like a collab with her and pay her to do a post for me. And you were so great. And also like.

Can I just.

Say like really affordable? Like you were affordable. You were I mean, for like someone like me who was brand new startup, didn't have any followers, didn't have anything. And I just to get off the ground, I think at the time you could have charged probably thousands and thousands of dollars, but you were so affordable. And I just really appreciated that about you because sometimes I've worked with other people where you want how much?

Nicole Angemi

So yeah, right. It's crazy.

Cara Lunsford

I know.

So I think the very first time I ever did anything with you, I just saw all these people following Holly Blue, and I was so excited. I distinctly remember laying in my bed and watching it go, ding.

Ding, ding, ding. And I was just like, Oh, my gosh, I have followers. Great.

So there's 1.7 million people out there and probably more who actually know who you are. So we don't need to introduce you for those people. But for the rest of the world that maybe does not know who you are. Tell us just a little bit about yourself and how you came to just create The Miz and Jimmy Page.

Nicole Angemi

So I'm a pathologist assistant. I have my bachelor's degree as a psycho technologist, which is looking at pap smears and stuff under the microscope. And then after I went to school, I got a little bit bored and started seeing like what else I could do. And at the same time, I made friends with a lot of the. So I was working in the pathology department at the hospital and I was friends with all of the pathology residents.

They were all around my age at the time and I would just wander over there to be like, Hey, what are you guys doing this weekend? Because we were all like 25 or whatever. And then that's when I kind of walked into the grocery and what it's called, and that's the anatomic pathology room where they dissect all the organs from surgeries.

And it was just like this whole world of what's going on over here. And I always tell this story to that. The reason that I went over there the one day in particular is that there was a really bad smell. And then when I walked in there to see, like what the commotion was, because everybody was like, oh, and it smelled disgusting, like a dead body.

And of course, that smell is so pungent and just hits you in the face. So I wanted to see what it was, of course. And I walked over there and they said, Oh, the leg refrigerator's leaking. And I was like, What is a leg refrigerator? And it was like a refrigerator in a pizza place or something. I'm sure if you walk in the hospital, you've seen it, but just a bunch of amputated legs wrapped up.

You could tell they were a leg because they just had the biohazard bag kind of taped on with the medical tape because they don't really have they might they just never use them in the hospital. Specific bags for legs.

Cara Lunsford

They don't have like just a leg bag.

Like, well, when I think lay back, I think probably knew immediately.

When I said leg.

Leg bag, I'm thinking about.

All the nurses who are thinking about a fully catheter bag that goes on the.

Leg.

It's like not that leg bag. We're not talking about that leg bag.

Nicole Angemi

No, I'm sure they probably sell these many body bag type things, but they probably cost too much. And people in the hospital are like, you could just put it in a biohazard bag and put some tape around it. And it works the same way. Yeah. So, you know, I walked over there and obviously the rest is history because I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I saw lots of cool stuff, giant ovaries and breasts, and I just, I don't know. I just never even though I was working as a silo tech, I just never really thought about if a person got a message to me, like where their boob went afterwards. Like, I just didn't think I didn't really think about it. I think a lot of people don't think about that.

And that's why I started writing about it, because I thought it was cool. So I was doing a blog that I had through like WordPress, and I went home every night and I was writing, writing, writing because when I finally went to school, I was a single mom. My kid was 13 to 15 years old. During that time, I worked full time at the same time and I was used to pulling off this, leaving the house at seven in the morning and getting home at midnight five or six days a week.

So when I finally graduated school, I was so bored. So I went home every night after work. And then I started writing because I just needed something to do. Kind of. It didn't really get much play because nobody knew about it, but I didn't really care. I just was, you know. And then my husband, he has a really popular Instagram account and he takes photographs.

Cara Lunsford

I don't think I knew that.

Nicole Angemi

He has a really awesome one, that he takes pictures in the city where he works and stuff. It's really, really good.

Cara Lunsford

That's so cool.

Nicole Angemi

He said we were dating at the time, but he said, Why don't you do your blog but like, do it on Instagram? And I didn't know what. And I hate social media. I didn't really know what it was. I didn't understand it. I had a teenager, so I heard about it. And she's the one that actually set it all up for me by the time that happened, she was 18 and then I started posting.

This was in 2013, I guess, because my daughter was a baby who's now ten and a half when I started. And it was awesome. Like I had 10,000 followers, like in a month.

Cara Lunsford

That's amazing.

Nicole Angemi

And then I said to my husband, we were at we were at like some art show. And he said, Oh, this is so crazy. I can't believe you got this many followers. And I was like, My goal is that I would like to have 100,000 people. That would be so cool that many people would know about my job.

And within two years it just it blew up. And there was some Alice Cooper gave me a shout out and George took I like super huge people that grew my following. Like one day I just woke up and had like 50,000 followers. So it's crazy.

Cara Lunsford

That's so amazing.

Nicole Angemi

It was fun. It was just like a whirlwind, you know?

Cara Lunsford

Well, yeah, and probably at the time I felt like that's what Instagram was intense did for, which was static photos and captions, like really interesting captions. And we've now evolved. I also feel like they're kind of chasing tech talk and stuff like that. It's go, well, we got to do what they're doing kind of thing. And short form video, not the video isn't great, but I really think that what was so cool about Instagram is that you could go to the gallery and it was really a gallery view and you felt like people really curated their gallery.

They paid attention to the quality of the photos that they put the craftmanship. I think a little bit around the quality of that content and you were so good at that. I don't even think you meant to be.

Like, but you.

Were so good at it.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah, it's a bummer. I put so much time into it. It paid off. It's worth it. I started it and wasn't doing it to become famous or to get anything out of it. I just did it because I liked it and my husband would make fun of me because it would be Friday night and I'd be in bed at 10:00.

I have to do this forensic Friday. And he's like, You actually don't have to. You don't get paid to do this. And this is like your fun thing. And then I would just say, No, I have to do it. And it was hard for me to just take off from it because I liked it, because I was reaching people and getting a positive response for the most part.

So it made me like keep wanting to go, you know, And now it's just I do that now on my website.

Cara Lunsford

Speaking of your own website, the GROSS Room, which is super awesome, by the way, I think it was a really great and intelligent move for you to just see your own value and realize that you could gauge your content in a different way. Again, I'm going to go back to the fact that you're so affordable.

I mean.

Maybe a little too affordable, but I think that that is something that people should really be taking advantage of because the time that you take, especially especially for student nurses, new nurses that are not getting a lot of training, a lot of times, you know, they're really and they're not getting great mentorship preceptorship in the hospital and they are really, really looking for ways to become more educated about the body, about the pathophysiology and all of these things.

Right? So what I really want to encourage people to do is to check out the gross room, because you spend a lot of time talking about disease process and anatomy and physiology, and it's just a really, really great resource for anybody who's a clinician. But really those new grads, if you're in nursing school, it's just priceless. And I just needed to put that shameless plug out there.

For you because I feel really passionate.

About it, because you do keep things so affordable and, you know, just very reasonably priced. Accessibility to health care is huge. It's a huge thing that I think is so important. You know, health literacy is so important. So just people out there who are not clinicians, but they are the general public who need to learn more about disease process and need to learn more about the human body.

Cara Lunsford

They can follow you and learn so much and really just elevate their own health literacy. So just hats off to you, because I do think that you've really figured out how to talk to the general public and clinicians in a way that is so accessible.

Nicole Angemi

It's a bummer because the benefit of the website is that I don't have limitations and I always wanted to write more, but just like I'm stuck with whatever limits with the however many characters you could have on Instagram. So that was one of the things. But the biggest thing is that the censorship just got out of control. And how could you teach regular people or anybody medicine when you can't talk about vaginas, a penis breast?

There's like major organ systems you can't even show because of. Let me give you an example. I did a post one time of a girl that was she didn't have a shirt on and she was in the mirror and she was showing how when she lifted up her hair to put her hair in a ponytail, she had like a vivid in her breast, which ended up being breast cancer.

And that's the only reason that she saw it. So I posted that picture to show just how insignificant that little divot was and how it was really good that she went and got it checked out. And my account is still this was a couple of years ago. My account is still on threat of being permanently deleted. I've even like pled my case to Instagram and wrote back exactly what it was.

And there just because I showed nipple, it's just so ridiculous. So the gross terms, good for that because I could show that stuff and I don't have to worry about being canceled or whatever.

Cara Lunsford

And that's the thing is that one of my very good friends, Katie Viegas, she created the Empowered Birth Project and it had almost 500,000. It had over 500,000 followers at one point in time. I think it's dwindled down a little bit because it's kind of been laying dormant. But she was all about birth and educating about birth. And, of course, you know, if you're going to talk about breastfeeding and birth and all these things, you need to not have it labeled as pornography.

And yeah, I'm sure it's difficult for them to be able to know the difference, right? Like I'm sure it is. But to some extent it's like certain accounts should get flagged as being legitimate, like legitimate accounts. Like anything that you post. Nicole, you've proven yourself or anything that empowered birth project posts, you've proven yourself. But the problem is, is that you probably got that content from someone else who posted it or, I don't know, maybe you didn't.

Yeah, but like if their account gets flagged and shut down, then it limits what you can share.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah. I don't understand how they run their thing. I mean, obviously there's millions of users on there. I feel like high level medical accounts, there's probably really only a handful. I don't think that there's a ton that they can't be on top of it. And honestly, I technology is so good that they could tell certain things very easily.

I just think it's a form of censorship. And I've heard this because people have been interviewed about me and I've read it and newspaper articles about me how certain people in the medical field think that that stuff should stay in textbooks and like regular people don't need to be seeing that stuff. And that's what I think it is.

Cara Lunsford

While dumbing people down. Right? It's always kind of like power play to keep yourself in a certain level of power, to keep other people not disempowered in a way. It's like then they're reliant on you and that's a level of control. So I think what you're doing is you're disrupting that. And nobody ever likes the disruptor, right?

Like it's I mean, some people do.

But you get a lot of pushback. And when you disrupt something.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah, exactly. It is what it is. But it ended up working out well, because now I have my website and I just get to write for people that want to be there. I don't have to deal with the trolls and that's nice. Everybody there is nice and wants to be there. They're nice to each other for the most part.

Cara Lunsford

Well, you can come over to nurse dot com any time, you can come over to nurse dot com and we will let you post your stuff.

Thank you.

And we won't take it down. So I'm going to see you in September for the Wild on Women's Conference. You are one of the keynote speakers, which is super cool, super exciting. One of the things that I love that we're going to be talking about and that we're going to be able to hear you talk about at the conference is really just kind of what you see from the pathophysiology of what happens when you receive a piece of tissue or when you receive a sample of a wound, or if you even see post-mortems, a wound, and you can actually understand how it was cared for and how it wasn't cared for or how it got

worse, maybe how it contributed to the person's mortality, you know, the morbidity. I'm really excited. I want you to tell everybody everything yet because they need to come to the conference if they want to hear the whole spiel. But I do think that like, you know, talk a little bit about wounds from your perspective, like just to talk a little bit about what we're going to be doing at the well done wounds, like what you see from a wound perspective in your line of work.

Nicole Angemi

So I started writing my lecture a couple of weeks ago and it's pretty much almost done. But I sent Kara a text and said, How crazy can I get with these pictures? Because I could do it in a PG rated or X ray. You know, there's a big variation, so it's pretty X-rated, I'll tell you that.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah.

Nicole Angemi

But you think that the wound nurses will be able to handle it. So it's there's some pretty gruesome pictures, but I go over in the lecture, I go over what happens in pathology or as a pay what we see. So we'll see things come in from surgical pathology, which is probably the one that nurses will most likely be able to relate to because most nurses have either worked or rotated or something in the O.R. and will send tissue down to surge past or even go down the surge path and see the lab.

Sometimes. So I talk about certain things that all different kinds of things that we get legs, amputations and different talk about infectious processes and cancer and everything that we would see in surgical pathology. But that's all natural stuff for the most part. And then sometimes we get resections for people that get shot that live. So we'll get a gunshot wound, but we'll get a whole small bowel because they got shot.

So we do see forensic wounds, too, in the surgical pathology lab, which just made me think of something to add to the lecture actually. And this is why I'm like, I keep going in and I'm like, Now I got to add that narrative, too, And then I'll go through what we see at autopsy and then the difference between seeing a natural wound versus one that was inflicted, whether it was by an accident or by a homicide suicide.

And we'll talk about all the different things that we look forward to say, okay, if you see a body on the ground, you could say they were stabbed or they were had blunt trauma, you know, things like that. So I think it's going to be really interesting. I have a ton of examples to show that are really good to show, you know, when there's something that describes a disease process.

But then in real life, when you see it, it's not always the greatest example. I really tried to pick the best examples to show you exactly what I'm talking about. And also I just have a ton of other pictures in there. And then in the end, they show some a couple of like weird ones that might fall into a couple different categories.

And I think it's going to be awesome.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, my gosh, too. What you were saying, Do wound nurses love gross stuff? 100%, like the Grosser. The grosser, the better they're like and they talk about it over lunch. They'll look at pictures over like, I mean, they really, you know, that I've done wound care with hospice and stuff like that in my career. I've done a lot of wound care, not just for hospice patients.

And I always tell people that when you swipe through my phone, you don't have to worry that you're going to come across like a nudie picture or something like that. You're going to get some stage three to Cube.

It's also it's on someone's sacrum.

Nicole Angemi

Exactly.

Cara Lunsford

And that.

Nicole Angemi

Really freaks people out worse than like a nude pictures.

Cara Lunsford

Of like.

If there was ever a way to deter people from swiping through your phone, you can always just strategically place a really gross one picture and then probably no one will ever pick up your phone again.

Nicole Angemi

You always wonder what people are thinking, too. Like the other day I'm at I was trying to order some cabinets for my house and I'm trying to show this guy he doesn't know what I do know anything about me trying to show him some picture of my phone and everybody's always looking over to see you finding it. And he was probably like, What is happening right now?

And nobody ever says anything. But I feel like that happens all the time.

Cara Lunsford

They're making a phone call after is what they're doing. They're like, We think we found that, you know, that murderer.

Between.

Nicole Angemi

I and my Google searches for sure.

Cara Lunsford

Like she has trophies.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, my God, I love it.

Okay, So I always really love asking you questions about some of your favorite posts. Your favorite stories, Some of them I think you've told us on an IG Live or something like that. But for the sake of this podcast, which has like a completely different audience, tell us a little bit about just some of your favorite, most shocking stories that you've ever come across.

Nicole Angemi

So I personally, I think that opposite of most people, but I prefer natural pathology over forensics because I just think it's more interesting to see just the random stuff that the human body could do without being inflicted on them, I guess. I don't know. It's just to me that's most exciting for me. And I've had a couple just really crazy autopsies.

I had this one I talked about on Instagram a couple of weeks ago about a peanut tumor. And this guy, he was really young, like in his thirties, and he had like clubbing of his fingertips in his toes. He was an immigrant and was here just on a visa. So nobody really knew anything about him. And he just died, you know?

And as soon as I saw that, I feel bad for the guy who's young and is thirties. But I get excited like, Oh my God, I'm going to find something good because like, why is this guy's look like this, right? And I opened him up and he just had a tumor in him, like his whole entire chest and abdominal cavity was just tumor.

Like I couldn't even take his chest play off. I had to, like, saw through it with the scalpel blade just to get through all the tumor. His lungs were stuck to his ribs like it was so insane. And my first thing is like, what the f was this guy exposed to? Like, how did this guy get this? It's so crazy looking because that's like, the first and only time I've seen something like that.

And that's the kind of stuff that excites me so much because I want to know more. Obviously, I couldn't get any more information because he was just here and I couldn't get any more history because I'm just so intrigued by that. What could cause something like that.

Cara Lunsford

So we don't know what he did for a living or anything like that, and could have been agricultural, like could have been breathing in pesticide. Like it's like so hard to know, right? Like what.

Could cause.

Nicole Angemi

And then it was just the gnarliest thing I've ever seen for we do a book club every month in the grocery Men this month were reading Radium Girls.

Cara Lunsford

Radium Girls.

Nicole Angemi

It's so good. Yeah, I just finished it yesterday. Do you know about the story? It's just about women who used to work in watch factories in New Jersey where I live, actually. And they would paint the dials to make it glow. And they were using radium. And the people that own the factory were telling them to, like, dip the pen in the radium and then lick it to make it like a real fine point.

But within months, some of the girls were getting severe osteonecrosis in their jaw and their face was falling off. Crazy. That's what you look at when you see a person that has something that's so bad like that. You're just like, What were they exposed to that their body got that bad, you know.

Cara Lunsford

And probably very fast too. I mean, again, just not having access to health care, right? So you come over here from another country, you're here on a visa, just not having great access to health care. Also just not being able to afford to take off work, to go get checked out, because that's what I found when I went to school at County.

I always used to say like I saw disease progression to like the end degree because by the time someone brought themselves to county, their leg was falling off. It probably like started out as a small wound on their toe and, you know, undiagnosed most diabetes. And it just got worse and worse. And then they just worked through it and they kept showing up at work because they were afraid they get fired or they couldn't afford to take a day off.

And by the time they end up there, it's too late. We're going to take your leg. You have stage four cancer. It's too late. It's just so sad, right? It's so sad that someone like him so young in his thirties probably just did not have access and maybe it wouldn't have made a difference. Right? Like maybe he wouldn't have been able to take off work and get chemotherapy and go to county and maybe he wouldn't have been able to.

We'll never know. You and I are like kind of different because I'm always taking care of the living people, right? Like helping them transition. But sometimes but oftentimes taking care of the living people and you're getting them when they're no longer alive or a piece of them just a piece of their body. But I do think that there's this part of me that's like also has that same fascination, right?

But then we're a little bit more beds sometimes. Like nurses can be a little.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah, we are too. And I was just going to say that because when I found out I was pregnant with my daughter, my daughter Lillian, who's ten and a half, I was working at a city hospital and in the city, you see that all the time. You get a breast tumor from someone that's bigger than their boob could have been.

And you're like, How were they walking around with this thing hanging off their boob? Like thinking about being a person that wears a bra? Like, where would you even put that thing?

Cara Lunsford

So I love you. Where are you going to put that thing?

Nicole Angemi

I just think about that stuff. Like if you see you get these giant testicles from people and you think, I mean, you've seen them on the TLC channel or something. The one guy that would carry it in like a hooded sweatshirt?

Cara Lunsford

No, I did not see that. But oh.

Nicole Angemi

He used to put the arms of the hoodie on his legs and then he put his giant balls in the hood of of the sweatshirt. But you see but you just think like, how was this person walking around like this in the city? You see that all the time. So then I took a job at the community hospital so I didn't have to take her into the city like a little baby on the train and stuff.

I just didn't want to do it. And it's the rich area. Everybody's got health insurance. And then I started getting one centimeter breast nodules and I just was like, This is so boring.

Cara Lunsford

It's true.

Nicole Angemi

And it sounds morbid because you should say, Oh, that it's good that the patients are not getting very sick and taking care of themselves, but it makes for very boring pathology.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, I mean, it does make for boring pathology, but it also, I think really does shine a light on just the disparities between health disparity and what people have access to when they're more affluent versus if you're living in an underserved area. And same thing like I was at County Hospital and it was a great training ground. Not to say that, you know, we should have to be training on people because they have such terrible health care that they just have these horrible things.

But I do think that it does provide us with a lot of information. And because you've been able to see that, you've been able to tell people why it's so important for early detection, like you have to see the worst, right, in order to aim for better.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah. And a lot of the times when you see something that's really bad deaths, cases of people that they don't want to go to the doctor because they're coughing and they swear they have lung cancer because they smoke their whole life and then they go and then it turns out, oh, they had TB, but like it's they're going to die from it because they just didn't go get it checked out.

It's not always the worst case scenario. If you have something wrong with you. And I hear I've heard cases of that a million times of just people that thought they had something and it turned out to not be anywhere near as bad. But since they ignored it, now it's bad.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, I really like having different types of care in terms of do we have Western or Eastern or like, you know, Chinese medicine and acupuncture. Now I'm all for all these different types of things, right? But I also think that sometimes the Internet has allowed people to just go and do anything and everything. And sometimes they've decided I don't need conventional medicine.

I am going to go down to this rural shack in some developing country somewhere and someone is going to feed me the insides of apricot seeds and that is going to cure my cancer and which we all know is actually cyanide, right, for therapy. Right. But people will go down and get this stuff and it's not to say that it's not maybe not going to have some effect or maybe doesn't help in some capacity.

But there is a reason why we clinically trial things. There's a reason why. Yes. A lot of the medications that we take, Doxorubicin, for example, is actually comes from like a red clay. It's widespread and but you don't want to just go and eat the red clay, right. Like you don't know how much of that you need and how much of it is toxic to your body and how much of it is therapeutic for whatever it is that you have.

And so you wouldn't just go eat like a handful of that red clay knowing that it could potentially help with your cancer. I think that that's also sometimes causing people to delay their care is or get worse in some way because they go and try something that's not really proven.

Nicole Angemi

I think the problem is like the pharmaceutical industry is just so much like I just went to the eye doctor last week and I'm like, My eyes are so dry. And then it's like, Oh, here's another. It's just always like a drug. A drug, a drug. And if you were on every single thing, like, I'm 44 years old, like I'd be on like 20 medications right now because they just are like, Do this, do this.

I feel like there's the balance of it doesn't have to be all that. But like obviously the other things not going to work either. It just has to be like kind of.

Cara Lunsford

It has to be integrative, right? Like, so I think that's why integrative medicine is so fascinating because it has it's not all of anything, right? It's not saying you got to do all of this or all of that. It's this nice kind of integrative approach of saying there's some stuff out there that has been tried and true and is your tumor is very responsive to this chemotherapy and you'll have a 95% survival rate if you take this chemotherapy and do the regimen and you will probably walk away and be fine.

Additionally, you're going to not be very hungry. You're going to have nausea, vomiting, stuff like that. You should really try cannabis because cannabis has like this.

Nicole Angemi

Gives you the munchies.

Cara Lunsford

Gives you the munchies, makes you gain weight, it helps with nausea and vomiting, stuff like that. So there's this really great integrative approach to saying like, it's not all or nothing, right?

Nicole Angemi

I like that because I was going to like a really top headache center at a neurology office because I was having such bad migraines and stuff every day of my life. They were giving me Topamax, like a lot of hardcore drugs kind of that were making me not be able to speak. And then I was talking to one of my friends who has celiac who was saying, you know, I used to get headaches and stuff before I got diagnosed and I stopped eating gluten.

And this was like four years ago and that's it off all the medicine, don't take the medicine anymore. And I'm like, Well, why didn't they ever suggest testing me for that or anything? It was a simple, not simple. I mean, it sucks I can't eat bread, but for anything with gluten, it's a simple solution and I don't have to be on those medications.

So there's, you know, there's a balance with everything.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that's what we're always trying to achieve. And I love that, you know, the way we got started talking about this was because of of seeing disease to the nth degree and the valuable nature of it from a teaching perspective that's valuable. But how we end up getting there, the people who are either in denial or maybe they have money and they have great insurance, but they're just flat out in denial or they go and they take like they don't have that great balance, right?

And so they divert and they they go just one way and they're like, I'm only going to do these feathers and I'm going to put these feathers over my breast for like three months. And then miraculously, I think it's going to go away. And that's horrible. When you watch somebody just wither away, when you know that there's a great approach that could be done.

Nicole Angemi

I had an autopsy once of a woman who was hemorrhaging after childbirth and her husband let her die and didn't give her blood products because of her religion. And that's kind of something watching that, I just thought I'm doing this autopsy on this young girl. She's 20, 28 years old and her husband's now leaving with her baby. She's in the morgue.

She's dead for something that she totally did not have to die for, you know, But ultimately, like, people are in charge of themselves and they can.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. And she's an adult, right? And this is a lifestyle that she has chosen. And this is a belief system. And I think a lot of people who who have certain belief systems and, you know, as we're exploring diversity and equity and inclusion and all these things, like as we are incorporating those things into our practice in health care, it's also just knowing that this is these are life choices.

You know, it's it's harder for me, I will be honest, like as a pediatric nurse. So when I was doing pediatrics, there were times when there were, you know, we had certain religions that had exactly that, like no blood products. Well, you know that when you're going through chemotherapy, you get anemic, low platelets. There were things that we could do to try and get around in blood products.

But in a severe situation if there was like sepsis or something involved like that. I think it's interesting because I actually have had patients who have certain religious beliefs that in the face of their child dying have said, no, you need to give the blood.

Nicole Angemi

It's interesting, actually, because I feel like there would be nothing in the world that would stop me from doing that. That's interesting to hear that from your perspective that people say, you know what, this is stupid. I'm not doing this right now.

Cara Lunsford

And the other way has gone to where we've had to sometimes figure out like it's been a real ethical dilemma where it's like, how much do you allow a parent to have control over their child who is a minor and the child does not have the ability to? Maybe they're young and they don't have the ability to say, I feel strongly about this or This is my faith and I really want to honor that.

And that was the situation. Sometimes we knew with teenagers we'd say, okay, if that's really what you want, will honor your feelings and your beliefs and we'll honor your parent's wishes in yours and in situations where the children were very young and didn't necessarily have the ability to choose, that was when ethics committees would get involved. That was something, you know, you are such an intelligent person, which is why it's so fun talking to you because you see the world through such a unique lens.

I think you also just look really cool. I mean, I don't look nearly as cool as you do.

Nicole Angemi

Way better hair.

Cara Lunsford

I have.

One third of the hair that you.

Have because it's only right down the middle.

Yeah, you're just like such a cool person. You have just a really unique way of looking at the world. You bring things to the clinicians and the public that are just they're just not available everywhere. And so I'm just massively grateful for what you bring. So thank you. They think.

That.

I did want to ask you, we talked about like one of the crazy things that you've seen that was more of an organic kind of biologic thing that happened. Give us like one. I know forensic is not like your biggest thing that you're passionate about, but what's kind of the craziest forensic thing that you feel you've ever seen or that got like the maybe traction on your Instagram page where it was like it blew up and people were like, what the.

Yeah.

Nicole Angemi

So in real life at Medical Examiner, the craziest thing that I ever saw in person was someone that got decapitated in a car accident. Oh, that was for real, I guess for like a real life thing. I mean, I saw people that got shot every day, which bothered me because, you know, in Philadelphia, we have a high murder rate and it was all kids, just kids, 19 year old kid.

I just hated it. You know, it's.

Cara Lunsford

Just it's so unnecessary.

Nicole Angemi

Between that and the drug death. And when I was there rotating 15 years, the drug deaths were not anywhere near where they are today, obviously. But again, just like a 20 year old kid dead in their basement, their mom found them. And I just being a mom and stuff, you just think about that, like, how do you put all this effort into waking up early, making their lunches, being up all hours of the night, taking care of them forever, and then they end up dead in your basement?

O.D. It's just so sad. But yeah, I saw someone got decapitated an accident. And that was just it's scary because it's you're in Philly, so you're in a city you live in on road you travel on all the time that somebody's head just got cut off in an accident on the same road that you'll be going home on.

And I think about that all the time. One of my classmates was at the M.E. right after me, and the person was driving on 95 and a tire flew off of a tractor trailer and went across the lanes and hit the guy in the head. She said his head was completely flipped backwards to his back and he died on the scene, obviously, And his wife was alive and watched the whole entire thing.

Really horrible stuff like that. As far as the grossest forensic case I've seen in the grocery, just because I find cases from all over the world is I have a video of it's a toss between two videos, but there's a video of a guy who laid on the train tracks and tried to kill himself and got run over by a train.

And his body is completely cut in half and he's still alive. And he like, is like moving his arms around and stuff. It's so crazy.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, my.

Gosh.

Nicole Angemi

Oh, it's like, really gnarly to see. And there is another one too, that there was some kind of I think it was a motorcycle accident or something. But they show this guy, like smeared all over the sidewalk and then you look over and his heart is on the ground and it's like still beating Oh.

Cara Lunsford

No.

Nicole Angemi

Probably just type like still beating in the search of the website and it'll come up, you know.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, my.

Nicole Angemi

Best part of the grocery is the search bar, because people would always email me and say, You posted this gallbladder and I'm like, Dude, scroll back. I don't know what to tell you. I can't search all these pictures now. It's very easy for me. Like, I know all these cases. I have like a mental catalog and I'm like, Oh, I know what to search.

And then I find them real easily. Now, do.

Cara Lunsford

You have a hashtag search? Like, can you search by hashtag or do you use hashtags.

Nicole Angemi

In all my website.

Cara Lunsford

On Yeah, the gross room.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah. You could just search any word if you search hard like everything will come up with hard stuff, you know so it's easy.

Cara Lunsford

That's so cool.

Nicole Angemi

I have it categorized too, but it's more specific if. You're looking for like a specific disease or something. It'll just come right up. And then there's another video of a guy that's like work in an industrial accident. He's working this machine called a Latham machine. I guess it cuts. I don't even know exactly what it does, but he got caught in it like a piece of his clothes and he just got wrapped up in it.

It was like sticking a person into a blender. It just was insane.

Cara Lunsford

Oh my gosh.

Nicole Angemi

One second up and working and then 30 seconds later, you look like a tomato milkshake. Like, it's just crazy.

Cara Lunsford

I know. It makes you realize just kind of how fragile. It's weird how we're just me, right?

It was like, you.

Nicole Angemi

Want to hear the most disturbing thing?

Cara Lunsford

Yes.

Nicole Angemi

So I'm like 80,000 pictures in my phone, right? I just don't ever go through and clear them. If I want to look for pictures of organs, like for the lecture, all I do is go in my phone and I search me and they all come up.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, my God, Is.

Nicole Angemi

That disturbing?

Cara Lunsford

I was just listening to it. Was this American Life I was listening to on the plane, and it was actually going to send it to you. And anyone who's listening to this can look this up because it was hilarious. They were literally talking about intelligent beings from another solar system, talking about us as much less intelligent beings, literally referring us as meat.

And one point that one being says to the other being like, yeah, they're just they're meat and they're being was like, that's not possible. Like they must have this or a processor in their brain or something like, you know, they must have. She's like now. And he goes, Well, what do they think with? And she goes, It's meat.

It's still meat. And then they flap their meat around to communicate like they flap it around.

I was like, Oh my God, this is so rare.

Nicole Angemi

Before we started talking today, I was in the kitchen, put in my meat, in the marinade for dinner tonight. I'm like, Oh, here's this fashion. It just looks it is. It looks the same.

Cara Lunsford

I know. It's so ridiculous.

I'm definitely sending you that this American Life, you'll get a real kick out of it. I was laughing out loud. Well, I loved this interview so much for so many reasons, because, for one, I felt like we got to talk about things that maybe you don't always talk about. I don't know. I just felt like we kind of got to get into some issues and things that are relevant and present today that, you know, just around health equity and talking about all of those things and listening to your views on that, which was really fun to talk to you about things that are not just about wounds and gross stuff, you know, but you as

a person who I think is just really intelligent and fun to talk to. So I'm really excited for this. For anyone who wants to come and see you, there's still a lot of you know, there's still availability for people to come to the Wild and Winds conference and check out some of the very cool things that you're going to be talking about.

Is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners before we go or.

Nicole Angemi

In doing this? I do a podcast in the gross room, and I think that we're going to be starting to do it for everyone on Apple Podcasts soon. SHUT Yeah, we're going to start that in the fall. We're still working on it.

Cara Lunsford

That is so smart. That is so smart. It should be it should be available for everyone to listen to. That is brilliant. Well, I'm so I'm so glad.

Nicole Angemi

Yeah, I think it'll be awesome. And I'll still like I have it in the grocery. I mean, we're still going to have it in the gross room for people so they don't have to listen to ads or anything because, you know, they're paying customers. And we, you know, we respect that and we don't want to bother them with that stuff.

I think it'll be cool because in the podcast we talk about pathology that's going on in the news. It just is never ending. We talk about everything from weird ways people die, crazy cases, and then we talk about different things, like different research that's going on. Like, I don't know if you heard about they're doing this at home mammogram that you could stick this thing in your bra and it read your breast like an ultrasound, like just said.

What kinds of things like that? Yeah, it's researchers are working on that now. So every week we just talk about the latest research that's going on and follow stories and then anything from forensics to like medicine stuff. It's basically like listening to the news, except without all of the politics in the ways it's basically it covers everything else.

Cara Lunsford

That is so cool.

Nicole Angemi

Pretty cool. Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

Are you going to use the gross room as your podcast or is it going to what it's going to be called?

Nicole Angemi

So I'm doing it with Maria, my daughter, and it's going to be called Mother Knows Death.

Cara Lunsford

Yes. Yes. This is going to be great.

Oh, my gosh. This is brilliant. It's brilliant. I won't tell anybody until this podcast goes live, but.

I know, right?

Nicole Angemi

Yeah, we're we're excited about it.

Cara Lunsford

So when are you planning to release your first one on Spotify?

Nicole Angemi

We were going to try to do it pretty soon, and then obviously I'm going to Florida to do this conference for you. So I didn't want to have that because we're driving there, so that'll be real fun. I'm going to get there and be like a frazzled mess because it's going to take us 18 hours to get there.

It's just a big thing because we want to take the kids. My kid can't get on the plane right now because she has to get tubes in her ears. It's a whole thing. So anyway, we're driving and then we're driving back after because my husband's doing a lecture on the way back in Virginia. So it's just going to be this crazy trip.

But anyway, we'll be gone for like a week. So I didn't want to start a project while I have that going on. So I said, when I get back and get settled, the kids start school and everything. Then we'll start it up.

Cara Lunsford

And you're are you going to have guests or are people going to write things in? And. Okay, very cool.

Nicole Angemi

We're going to try to do every week. We're going to try to do the news like we've been doing and then try to do other episodes which are going to be called external examination, where we're going to be interviewing people that have stuff to do with it. But it's not exactly just interviewing like some kind of person that's a forensic expert or something.

They might. For example, last month we read for a book club in Two Minds by Dr. Dos, and he's Awesome. He's a forensic psychiatrist, and he just had such a different perspective because he takes care of the people that are killing people, talking to him. He's awesome. He has a YouTube channel to just guests like that that just have like this different perspective.

All on the same thing though. So it could just be anything that we're talking about that week that's just relevant, but it'll be like another episode, so it'll be cool because I've been having such awesome interviews for these book clubs I've been doing, and I thought like just a lot more people would be interested in it as well.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, absolutely. If you ever get Brené Brown, can you invite me?

Sure. Thank you. Not that she's necessarily your your area, but, you know.

I mean, who knows?

Nicole Angemi

I know. I just I'm like, open to having anybody discuss stuff because it's all everyone has their own thing and it's just cool to talk to people.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, she's a researcher. She's a data researcher, storyteller. I'm always plugging it because I'm always hoping that one day she's going to hear me say, I really want to have Bernie Brown on the podcast, and then she'll be like, I would like to be on your podcast.

Nicole Angemi

That's how it works, though. I do that all the time too. With Nancy Grace. I'm like, Oh, I always give her a shout out and stuff on Instagram. I'm like, Maybe she'll come on my podcast one day or something. I don't know.

Cara Lunsford

All right. You try to get Brené Brown for me and I will try to get Nancy Grace for you. It's like a race to the finish. Okay. Yeah. Well, I love you and I'm so excited to drop this episode. I'm so excited for everyone to get to know a little bit more about you and. Just thank you for taking time and spending it with me.

And hey, to Maria over in the corner over there somewhere.

Is always in the corner.

Nicole Angemi

When we started, she's like under the desk, you know, I don't know how to use a computer.

Cara Lunsford

This is where she keeps her.

Daughter under the desk or in the corner.

I love it. I love it.

Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I've kept you longer than I was supposed to. But that's just because I enjoy talking to you so much. Thank you.

Nicole Angemi

Chris.

Cara Lunsford

Good to talk to you, too. All right.

Nicole Angemi

Bye bye.

Cara Lunsford

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