Once in a while we get thrown a curve ball and get specimens from people who don’t need any clinical direction anymore.

Today, I received a vitreous fluid specimen from a 15 year old boy who was killed in a bike accident—a huge bummer in and of itself. They wanted to know if alcohol was involved.

Basically, eyeball fluid is a good specimen for post mortem ethanols because the levels are pretty stable and bacteria don’t have an easy time mucking things up in there (as they tend to in a lot of specimen types).