Anyone experienced dead bodies?Update photos/home #149

[EweSheep]

Wow, you guys really got smacked good! Even worse, if you were young, it was bad enough! I know it would have scarred me for life!

I can not imagine how many different people have different reaction to death and some embrace death like in certain cultures.

 

[mangled]

I'm a hospice nurse and death is my milieu. I have to bathe the body after death and prepare it for family viewing and transport to the funeral home. Some of our patients die from things that, unfortunately, causes their bodies to practically rot while they are still alive and the smells can be pretty bad. Sometimes the fluids gush out when you turn them over to bathe and change linens. These fluids smell worse than nearly anything I've ever smelled in my 17 years of nursing...even a GI bleed.

I also use the Vicks trick and try not to think too hard about it. It is just a vessel and the contents are gone. The body deserves our respect and gentle handling until it is out of our care. We are extremely gentle with the handling of the bodies and even talk to the departed as we do so.

I know TV sensationalizes these things and almost turns it into something gruesome and even mysterious, but it would benefit everyone to have to deal with the dying and dead of this world. It would give you a more practical and sensible view on death as a normal part of living, the end of a cycle and inevitable as day following night.

I do the very same thing.

Many of our CNA students are fine until they have to provide post-mortem care. I find the older girls are much more practical about it, but the younger generation are totally freaked out. I tell them if they need help, and no one will help them, come get me and we'll get them through it. It seems the younger girls expect them to pop off the bed and attack or something. It's odd.

I've had girls quit over it. It's sad, really.

I guess those of us with practical experience with it have a much different view.

Blessings-
Em​

 

[EweSheep]

They watched too many horror movies!

 

[gritsar]

I've been exposed to many a dead body, starting in high school. I was the president of the Criminal Justice Club for my junior and senior years (yes, for those of you who are thinking it, I did have a thing for cops, even way back then). On a field trip all the members of the club visited the Miami-Dade crime lab and the morgue.
After high school and as a caretaker for the elderly I have not only sat with sick and dying folks, but have prepared their bodies before the funeral homes came to pick them up.
The worst though had to be my ex FIL. He was estranged from my ex-husband and also a hermit. When he died, he was all alone and sat in his isolated, run down house for two weeks before anyone discovered the body. The coroner in the town where he had been living went out of his way, sifting through tons of paperwork and doing some sluething on the internet in order to locate my ex. We traveled down there to claim his ashes and sort through his belongings. My ex BIL and his wife met us down there.
When we arrived at the FIL's home, his remains had already been gone from the house a week and the fire dept. had been running two of their big fans (normally used to clear out smoke) the entire time to try and clear out the smell. The fans weren't working, trust me.

The first thing we saw when we arrived was his recliner that he had died in. The coroner's office had carried the chair, with his remains still in it, out to the front yard. Once they removed him from the chair, they burned the chair.
The coroner never came right out and said it, but we gathered that animals had gotten into the house and worked on his body some before it was discovered.
Fortunately for us, both my ex SIL and I had worked around dead bodies before and knew to stop and buy a big jar of Vicks on the way down there. Before we got out of the car we each put a big glob of the Vicks under our noses and some in our nostrils. It helps with the smell and I don't know a single police officer that doesn't keep a jar of it in their patrol cars.
The worst part, the absolute worst part of the whole ordeal, was finding one of the FIL's slippers that he had been wearing when he died. It apparently had fallen off when they moved the body. Let's just say that they hadn't gotten all of his remains out of the house.
I will never forget that experience as long as I live.

 

[AKsmama]

I've never seen a dead body other than at funeral home viewings. Oh wait, I did see my grandmother's body in the hospital bed. She died of massive organ failure and was on a breathing machine when she passed, and it was still going when we arrived. I guess a doctor has to say or sign something saying the machine can be turned off. It wasn't pleasant for the family, but, that's the way things work.

I saw a show on Discovery or Discovery Health- seems like it was two or three episodes- about a company that does cleanings at scenes where people have died or been killed. Of course their services were expensive, but they used the heavy-duty industrial cleaners and equipment that did the job correctly. They were licensed and all that, it wasn't a few workers with bleach and buckets. They would clean not just the bodily fluids, but if there were dirty dishes and laundry and things like that in the home, they would take care of all that too. They were very respectful. It was an interesting show.

 

[Beekissed]

I often think that, if people still had to take care of their own sick and dying people, they would have a healthier attitude towards death...and life, for that matter.

They would probably be far less concerned with killing a chicken~or any animal~ for food and be much more content with their own lives if they realized that it all comes to an end...early or later, everything dies and there is no mystery or big deal about it.

Something must die for others to live, it is a basic fact of life on this Earth. You can package it up so that no one ever sees the death, but it still happened and will continue to happen.

Life is much easier if you know this down deep where it counts.

 

[Dinkadoo]

I have seen several dead bodies, my parents included. I know when my daddy died, my neice and DD weren't there at the time. The next day, they both wanted to got to the funeral home to see him before they did any thing to him. Now my DD is a nurse, but when they got back from the funeral home, DD said she would never do that again because natural things happen to a body. I really felt bad because I did not know. I would have never agreed for her to go and see her Papa if I had known.

 

[Mountainlaurel]

I had never seen dead people other than at viewings. But this last fall, my MIL died from melanoma cancer and my FIL asked me to prepare her for the funeral home.

I had my oldest dd who is a registered nurse and worked in a nursing home while going to college help me. Also, my 3 SIL's got stuff for me like the clothes my FIL wanted her to wear and when I had questions, they helped me. It was the last thing I did for her and it made my FIL feel better but I couldn't have done it without my daughter telling me what to do with the gauze and how to properly clean her, she was terribly swollen so I had to cut her clothes off her but she was always a neat clean sweet smelling woman and even though she had cancer, she really didn't smell to me. I was more worried that I would do something that would upset one of my SIL's than anything but they did good. The funeral directors came and took her to the home and we had it closed casket since we didn't have her embalmed. This is the old mountain way of doing it and it actually gives comfort to you. You have the chance to say goodbye and your last act for them is to do what you think they would want you to do.

 

[noodleroo]

Quote:
I've never heard of this, but it sounds like a really good idea. I've never understood the 'embalming' ritual, what seems like a very barbaric thing to do.

 

[darkmatter]

Anyone experienced dead bodies?

Yes, too many