If you remember from my previous blog, I had mention that with the holidays and winter comes our busy season in the death industry...or at least our funeral home. This week showed me just how busy and crazy it can get. So let's do a hell week recap!
Monday: We have an evening visitation at our main location and everything is going fairly well...until this one elderly gentleman starts to pass out and vomit black bile aka blood. We called 911 and they sent a fire truck over...and then they called for an ambulance once they realize his blood pressure was continuing to drop and after he reenacted a scene from
The Exorcist only this time swapping out the pea soup with black bile. Guess who the lucky person was who had to clean that up! Thankfully he made it all into the blue recycling bin. Out of everything I do, and encounter on a daily basis, vomit will always be a gagging trigger for me. I don't believe we got any calls that night.
Tuesday: Caleb and I had to go on a call to a hospital which usually isn't a big deal. This time however proved to be such a pain in the ass because the entry into the morgue is by the loading docks and you need to take a lift up. Well there was a semi trailer not only blocking the lift but partially the stars as well. We had called security but they pretty much useless, so Caleb and I decided to drop the got and climb up the stairs. Once we got in we got the body and I was ready to put our ankle identification bracelet on her. When I opened up the body bag I saw that she was a double leg amputee and was fairly large, it is safe to say she was fairly spherical with her double amputation. Due to this our second leg strap was worthless which meant she was only locked in around the ribs, which really made me nervous about going down the stairs in case her weight shifted. After looking at how close the semi was parked to the wall, we decided to try to take the lift down but keep the gate in instead of locking in (because it swings out to open). This meant that we had to put the cot in at an angle an each hold on to its ends with dear life. We made it safely down and after dropping the cot only one level, were able to squeeze all the way down. It was truly a feat of daring, but we made it. Later that day we unfortunately had to pick up the body of Michelle's brother-in-law, from the M.E. because he had died of a drug over dose, he was only 30 and left behind two little boys and his fiance.
Wednesday: Even though we had two services that day, I didn't work either one because they were day services and I was in school. Michelle and her family did a private viewing on their dearly departed which started at 5:30, and wasn't done until 7:30. Normally we only allow for an hour but since Michelle works there and there was no one else around obviously we made an exception. I got to meet her sister (now widow) and her little nephews. It was truly heart breaking hearing them say "why is daddy so cold?" and "give daddy a hug good bye, promise him you'll be a good boy." I can not even begin to image what kind of hell Michelle and her family are going through. Drugs are absolutely the worst and take the lives of too many people.
So when I got done at 7:30, I went back to my dorm, only to get called back in at 9 for a removal; I was literally 3 minutes away from my dorm and then got
another call and didn't get done until 12:15 a.m. On that second call we were told that it was a house call and that the man was around 240 lbs, big, but should still be manageable with our regular cot...we were lied to. This guy was well pushing over 300 lbs, and should have been placed on our bariatric cart. To top it off we had to go up and down a sharp incline of stairs with a very obese man...I was petrified of dropping the body or slipping on the stairs....turns out my fear was misplaced because when we got back to The Home the cots back legs didn't click in and ended up dropping....my greatest fear realized. I will mention that my partner Kevin and I did notice that this gentleman had a very red and swollen eye, but the hospice nurse checked off the "No" box for needing to inform the medical examiner, we noticed this at the house before the issue with the cot.
Thursday: After spending a good chunk of my day making register books and videos, Dani asked me about what was going on with the guy with the black eye that Kevin and I had removed last night. I told her what we knew (which was nothing, he was already pretty much like that, although now the swelling had gone down and staining had taken place). Turns out that
we should have asked the hospice nurse as to what had happened because the M.E. who had come in was questioning it and thought it looked suspicious, who the fuck knows.
Friday: I worked one of the two services at our second location, and had to do a line up outside, so that is where I spent most of my time, until I came back and finished a bunch of books. Kevin and I got a removal call at around 7 p.m. that night, and at 9 p.m. Dani called me saying to come in early tomorrow for an embalming. Oh and Caleb asked if I would cover for him on Monday so he could go to the Packer game...he originally texted me, and I was ignoring it; until all of a sudden he magically showed up at work which he hardly ever does on a Friday until it's his night to be on call. I said I would...mainly because there was really no other option, which really sucks about this job. I ended up working 12 hours that day.
Saturday: I knew going into Saturday was going to be just absolutely wretched, and I was not wrong. I got in at 7 a.m. and Dani was already pretty much done with the embalming...yeah why the hell was I even there? We had 4 funerals that day, two at are main location, one at our other location, and one at church. I was stuck at our main location parking cars. Once service A was under way, it was stopped about half way through due to an elderly man fainting. Quick flash back to Monday! Thankfully this man was not vomiting an ode to
The Exorcist We did have to call 911 and get the man taken to the hospital, all the while trying to get this other service underway. It was such pandemonium the parking lot because both services were doing a procession, but you could only start the line up for service A, to which we only had 4 cars....until the fuckers found out that there was going to be a free lunch, then
everybody wanted to go. So Sean and I are running around the parking lot trying to get flags on all the cars that are going in procession, and once we get that one done and on its way, service B gets done and the
exact same fucking thing happens AGAIN! So now service B is done and we have to frantically clean because we have a family coming in to do a private viewing and another family coming in to do an arrangement Then we need to finish the books and get things ready for tomorrow. Oh and did I mention that we had two death calls, in two different cities? So now Kevin and I get to spend the rest of our afternoon driving across the great state of Wisconsin. First we go up to Oconomowoc because this removal was going to be embalmed, so that was about an hour of driving but the removal went well. Once we got back from Oconomowoc, we then had to go down to Racine not knowing that the woman we were transporting would be well over 400 lbs. Yeah, we couldn't even get the arm rests to go up let alone zip up our cot all the way. I have never seen Kevin drive so timidly before, taking very wide turns...believe me it was a good thing because this woman was barely on our cot. Again another case where, had we had known, we would have taken our bariactric cart. So now we are back from Racine and solicit the help from David to get this lady into our prep room, thankfully she was just alternative care. While Kevin is working on her, I go up front, only to encounter Jack taking yet
another death call, this one being at some creepy ass rest home in Milwaukee that Kevin and I have never been to. It is now 5:15 and the family says that we need to be there by 6...we get there at 6:10, after we finally figure out where it is that we need to go.
This place is just as creepy on the inside as it is on the outside, plus it is run by Polish speaking nuns in full nunnery. The family we met during this removal was really nice, but when we gave them some time to say good bye, Kevin and I were unaware that they were actually waiting on two more family members to come, so we waited for over half an hour...we were not pleased.
Kevin and I playing the waiting game
Praying to Jesus to give us strength and endurance to get through today.
When we finally did leave, we had to walk back down this creepy ass hallway that was only partially lit.
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| Gee doesn't that remind you a lot of this? |
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| Just add some nuns in the background and you got yourself this creepy ass rest home that Kevin and I went to |
So we finally get this removal done, only to find out that Dani has been waiting on us so we could get this embalming done. Kevin and I were not pleased, we were so over tired, we were getting slap happy. Thankfully with the three of us, and the fact that it was only a one point embalming, we were able to get it done within 30 minutes or so. By the time we were walking out the door it was 8 p.m. I had officially worked 13 hours.
Thus ends the official work week, tomorrow starts a new one
I pray to the Lord Jesus Christ, who died on the cross to save me from sin, that we do not have any more calls today or tomorrow, but especially today.
I do not know what tomorrow will bring but pray that it doesn't end with me working another 13 hour shift.
Until next time.
