Today Caleb (the other apprentice who actually helped me get this job,...guess I should have mentioned him earlier) and I were to go on a call to do a pick up at St. Frank's Hospital. Now Caleb has worked at The Home for about a year now, and so he is very well versed in procedures and such; and it just so happens that we both have Economics together. Caleb thought that it would be a fantastic idea to let me drive the van to the hospital....yeah, let's let the new girl, who is totally unfamiliar with Milwaukee drive a very expensive company van to go pick up a dead person.
Thankfully he gives decent driving instructions, however the way this hospital is laid out I and to back up about thirty feet with the van to place it in front of the loading dock. Normally a hospital's morgue is in the lowest level, ironically in this hospital it was on level 1, so that meant that we had to take the elevator with the gurney.
Everything went okay,we notified security that we were there to pick up a Mrs. Ludwick, and waited patiently for the guard to traverse his way down. Once all of the paper work was checked, signed, and handed over we were able to ID the body and get Mrs. Ludwick onto our gurney.St. Frank's is notorious for not completing all of the paperwork -- case in point, there is a little box that needs to be checked Yes or No in regards to taking the body to the medical examiner's office; until a box is checked, we legally can not take the body anywhere. And it just so happened that neither box was checked. Funeral directors are not allowed to check said box, a nurse, or in this case the security guard has to check it, which just adds more wait time to the pick up and is just really annoying.
But everything was done and we loaded Mrs. Ludwick into the van, and I drove off quietly into the sunset....not really it was still the afternoon, but it paints a romantic picture in your head. So once we got back to The Home I had to try and back up the van into the garage next to the very expensive, and very large hearse. While trying to maneuver this, I accidentally ran over some mulch which in turn had Caleb yelling at me and Mitch (one of the funeral directors) coming out and freaking out on me as well. Here I am, freaked out enough trying not to scratch the multi-thousand dollar vehicles, and both of these guys are freaking out that I ran over some mulch. I guess Jim and Jack take their landscaping very seriously. Thankfully everything was alright and I was able to fix the roadkill mulch.
Oh, did I mention that Mrs. Ludwich in all her amazing deadness was to be embalmed? Oh yeah, that's right folks, little Ms. Jordy Death got to embalm her first body. So from this point on in your reading, if you do not wish to read about the art of embalming stop here, because this freak train is just now leaving the station....
You decided to stay? Lucky you! So proud of your ability to face death head on!
Now some funeral directors have their own preference as to what they want to wear when they embalm someone, but rule #1 is to always have a separate pair of shoes for embalming. Mitch was going to do the embalming on Mrs. Ludwick and I was to be assisting him. For Mitch he removes his suite jacket and changes his dress shoes, I on the other hand changed into a pair of scrubs that I keep in my car for just such occasions.
 |
| Me post embalming. |
So after we changed we put on our Personal Protective Equitment; as I had mentioned in an earlier post it consists of a blue gown, white plastic lunch-lady-esqe apron, blue latex free gloves, and a face mask or shield. Mrs. Ludwich was already on the embalming table, undressed and ready to go. I sprayed her down with a disinfectant spray while Mitch got out the necessary tools. I then got the first world experience of shaving a woman's face. When women (and men obviously) age, facial hair tends to grow, and it also tends to be the last thing on their mind when they are on their death bed. So we shave everyone's face to help the cosmetic process later down the death infused road.
I took the disinfectant spray and sprayed into the eyes, nose and mouth, and then took a piece of cotton and swabed everything out. Then I placed in the eye caps, but her damn lids just would not stay closed. Mitch said not to worry, that once we begun the actual embalming process her lids would stay shut.
After that was done Mitch handed me the tool that would help seal her mouth. I paused a moment in a state of shock because Mitch was actually trusting me to do this, but after he explained the procedure I placed the end bit against the top of her gums and firmly implanted the metal wire, then did the same on her lower gums. After the wires are in place you carefully twist them together to close the jaw, now since Mrs. Ludwick did not have any teeth or dentures I had to place in a mouth piece that looks like an overly large eye cap. This helps form the mouth and makes it so Mrs. Ludwick doesn't look like a monkey. Once the plastic is inserted I then took small bits of cotton and inserted them around the inside of her mouth to create a fullness in her face.
With the feature setting done we were ready to begin the actual process of embalming. Unfortunately our dear Mrs. Ludwick was not in the best shape, although I do not know what she officially died from, I can venture a guess that it might have had something to do with her liver because she was extremely jaundice and her stomach was distended and bloated from all the bacteria and gas buildup.
In order to alleviate the pressure in her stomach while we embalm, Mitch had to literally stab a hole into her stomach and place a set of large tweezers inside the hole to keep it open. What spewed forth was perhaps some of the most vile bile I have ever seen or smelled. This is the part where I almost started gagging because the smell was so horrid, it was like a paper mill, inside a full diaper of an infant that was fed curry trapped inside a fart. It. Was. Horrible. Not to mention the brown and yellow juices that were running from the hole were just as gag worthy. Mitch and I had to take special care as to not get splattered with the bile because of how acidic it was.
With her balloon of a stomach slowly deflating, Mitch cut into the top chest area where the carotid artery was and then he reached in and found the artery. It looks and feels like a rubber band in case you were wondering. He then had me take a small pair of medical shears and snip into the artery and place the small tube that we use to run the fluid. First we ran a fluid that would basically flush out her system, once that was done we then ran the embalming fluid, since Mrs. Ludwick was so yellow, we had to add some extra concentrated red dye to help counteract her coloring. Basically embalming fluid replaces the blood, and since you have to drain the body of its blood the embalming fluid needs to be a dark shade of red to bring back the 'life' like quality into the body.
All of a sudden my eyes started watering very badly. Apparently this is the normal reaction to embalming fluid. I was really expecting to be gagging from the smells, not to be crying over the intense chemical burn that was happening to my eyeballs.
We repeated the slice, stab and flush on the other side of her chest and also on her right arm because her hand was not getting any color back into it. When you have the embalming fluids running through the body you can see the veins buldge back up with the flow of the liquid. I had to then wash and massage Mrs. Ludwick's body to get the fluid to flow through everything.
Here is where the process gets a bit violent and gross. There is a device called the trocar that we use to suck out all of the grossness inside the body cavity. It is a very long metal tube that is hooked up to some tubing and has a very sharp metal point at the end. We stab this end into the stomach cavity and then begin to literally fence our way into the organs inside the body, sucking out all the blood, shit, food, gas, bacteria, etc. This brown sludge then in turns goes down the drain. Consider this liposuction for the dead. It is during this process that you are the most likely to fuck shit up and have literal shit go flying everywhere because of clogs that happen within the tubing. Thankfully since Mitch was with me that didn't happen...but apparently it had happened to Caleb....We also must be careful when doing this procedure that we do not stab straight through to the other side. When this happens holes and leakage can happen...not good. Unfortunately since Mrs. Ludwick's liver was so hard, we made two little holes, but these are easily plugged up with a trocar plug. A white plastic plug that is twisted inside of the hole.
Now if you were to open up the body cavity after trocaring someone, you'd see that lungs, heart, stomach, liver, intestine...everything, has been through a bloody fucking massacre and it's just...well disgusting. Thankfully we do not do this, instead I shall leave you imagining what it may look like.
Once the tubing from the trocar starts to run clear we remove the device and insert another trocar that is hooked up to a tube that is attached to a bottle embalming fluid. There are about six or more different kinds of embalming fluid we use, in case you wanted to know. We hold this bottle above our heads while moving the trocar around spreading the fluid inside of the body cavity, once this is done all we need to do is sew up the places that we cut into.
I then proceeded to wash the body and the hair and put a massaging face cream on her face to help soften her features when she gets cosmetized.
So now Mrs. Ludwick is officially embalmed and deemed "safe" by whatever powers that be. She no longer requires refrigeration (unless of course we had to keep her body for an extended period of time for whatever reason).
We transferred her remains from the embalming table, to a portable table that will be kept in the preparation room. After cleaning and sanitizing the embalming room I was now officially able to change back into my black and white, and that was pretty much it for the day.
I got to embalm my first body today...what did you do?
Until next time.
That was ... disgusting.
ReplyDelete