Flight Frenzy
I was awakened about 7am by my boss; we had a call. Normally, I wouldn't be on call until 8am, but I didn't mind. I had a good night's sleep and it's a few extra dollars in my pocket. The family had not been notified of the death by the nursing home staff, as they could not reach anyone on the phone. So I make the removal and take the body to the cooler, head home and get some breakfast and a shower before returning to work. When I arrived, my boss was heading to the cooler to retrieve the body, which was to be embalmed and returned to his home country. The owner was meeting with the family later in the morning.
While Returning Employee is embalming, I'm doing the usual Saturday morning routine: empty trash, sweep floors, mop, dust. Just some light housekeeping. The family arrives and the owner sits down with them. To make a long story short, it was about 2 hours of frantic activity. The family wanted the body on the plane tonight. In order to ship to the desired destination, we needed a signed death certificate from the doctor. Normally, we wouldn't even be able to reach a doctor until Monday, but the family knew him very well. We were able to generate the certificate, get it to the doctor, and he signed on the spot. Then we had to call one of the health department employees at home to have her review the certificate and make sure it was in order. We didn't want to file it on Monday only to have it rejected while the body was long gone to another land. Fortunately, she was home and willing to help. We then had to hurry up and prepare the body for shipping, then drive about 2 hours to the appropriate airport for international shipping. My driver called about 5pm, saying he couldn't find the right cargo terminal to drop off the body. I gave him a couple of suggestions, and told him if he ran into trouble, call the owner.
The whole time all of this is going on, I'm writing obituaries, setting up for visitation, entering other files from the past couple of days, answering phones, etc. It was a very frantic day and I'm glad it's over. (I hope it's over; when my driver called, he was almost an hour past deadline for delivering the body). And when it's all said and done, we don't know why the family was in such an all-fired hurry to send the body out today.
While Returning Employee is embalming, I'm doing the usual Saturday morning routine: empty trash, sweep floors, mop, dust. Just some light housekeeping. The family arrives and the owner sits down with them. To make a long story short, it was about 2 hours of frantic activity. The family wanted the body on the plane tonight. In order to ship to the desired destination, we needed a signed death certificate from the doctor. Normally, we wouldn't even be able to reach a doctor until Monday, but the family knew him very well. We were able to generate the certificate, get it to the doctor, and he signed on the spot. Then we had to call one of the health department employees at home to have her review the certificate and make sure it was in order. We didn't want to file it on Monday only to have it rejected while the body was long gone to another land. Fortunately, she was home and willing to help. We then had to hurry up and prepare the body for shipping, then drive about 2 hours to the appropriate airport for international shipping. My driver called about 5pm, saying he couldn't find the right cargo terminal to drop off the body. I gave him a couple of suggestions, and told him if he ran into trouble, call the owner.
The whole time all of this is going on, I'm writing obituaries, setting up for visitation, entering other files from the past couple of days, answering phones, etc. It was a very frantic day and I'm glad it's over. (I hope it's over; when my driver called, he was almost an hour past deadline for delivering the body). And when it's all said and done, we don't know why the family was in such an all-fired hurry to send the body out today.
posted by Granimore | 5:18 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home