I Guess I Know What I'm Doing
Today I was flying solo. The owner took the day off, and the other director was off today. I am not very experienced at making complicated arrangements, so I was hoping nothing significant would occur. However, we got a death call last night. The arrangements were for embalming and shipping out of state. I can handle the embalming, which I finally got around to doing after some early chaos.
One of our previous calls required the cremation be performed and the urn ready this morning. I had to run to the crematory first thing this morning to pick up the ashes. I did that, put them in the urn and was preparing to embalm our new call. Just as I was getting the features set (closing the eyes and mouth), we had a death call. I was the only one available to go on the call, so I stopped what I was doing and made the removal. When I got back, the other director was there. He contacted the receiving funeral home and got the information we needed and I proceeded with the embalming. I set the features, raised the artery, mixed the fluid and started injecting. It all went well and the body turned out just fine. I performed a flawless heart tap (a process for draining blood directly from the heart rather than raising a vein) and got good distribution. After that, I booked the flight for tomorrow morning.
The owner came in late in the day just to check up on everything. I told him we had just put the body in the shipping container, but he was certainly welcome to check him out. My boss asked how the body looked, and I said he looked just fine. Then my boss said, "If you say he looks fine, then I don't need to see him." That blew me away. Normally he's a stickler for every body that goes out. So either he trusts me and my skills and judgement, or he's just not as focused as he used to be. I prefer to think the former.
One of our previous calls required the cremation be performed and the urn ready this morning. I had to run to the crematory first thing this morning to pick up the ashes. I did that, put them in the urn and was preparing to embalm our new call. Just as I was getting the features set (closing the eyes and mouth), we had a death call. I was the only one available to go on the call, so I stopped what I was doing and made the removal. When I got back, the other director was there. He contacted the receiving funeral home and got the information we needed and I proceeded with the embalming. I set the features, raised the artery, mixed the fluid and started injecting. It all went well and the body turned out just fine. I performed a flawless heart tap (a process for draining blood directly from the heart rather than raising a vein) and got good distribution. After that, I booked the flight for tomorrow morning.
The owner came in late in the day just to check up on everything. I told him we had just put the body in the shipping container, but he was certainly welcome to check him out. My boss asked how the body looked, and I said he looked just fine. Then my boss said, "If you say he looks fine, then I don't need to see him." That blew me away. Normally he's a stickler for every body that goes out. So either he trusts me and my skills and judgement, or he's just not as focused as he used to be. I prefer to think the former.
posted by Granimore | 7:22 PM
5 Comments:
Thank you for sharing. What kind of circumstances would require a heart tap instead of draining the vein? Is one method better than the other? Easier?
Congratulations on earning the trust of your boss. I can relate to how relieving that is!
It's not the circumstances that would require a heart tap, it's just a preference. It's neater, for one thing. We attach surgical tubing to the trocar, make the heart tap and the blood flows into the drain channel. With veinous drainage, it can be very messy. You have a drain tube that is splashing blood all over the table, especially when you're draining from the jugular. Also, with the heart tap, you get more copious drainage. All blood returns to the heart; not all blood finds it way up to the jugular when you're injecting fluid.
Interesting. Thank you for the clarification.
The funeral business is bizarre. Are people really paying you $10,000 because they're unable to tell the difference between a corpse and a person they used to know?
I'm not sure where you got your $10,000 figure. Some people can pay that much depending on what kind of casket they select. Some people pay less than $1000.00 for a simple cremation with no ceremony. It all depends on what the family wants.
Post a Comment
<< Home