#funeralfactfriday — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #funeralfactfriday, aggregated by home.social.
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#FuneralFactFriday: Bodies Can Turn GREEN 🍀
Yes, it’s true, and not just on St. Patrick’s Day. It happens when a person with jaundice is embalmed using high index formaldehyde fluids.
Jaundice is a yellow discoloration found in both living and dead people. It's caused by a buildup of bile pigments in the skin, eyes, bodily fluids, and tissue, often resulting from problems with the liver, gallbladder, or pancreas. A person with liver failure, cirrhosis, or hepatitis is often yellow tinged.
During embalming, formaldehyde can change the yellow bilirubin into green biliverdin. It can range from mild to moderate to extreme. Special embalming fluids (like glutaraldehyde) exist to help mitigate the color issues, but the primary concern is preservation. Color correction is secondary. If the color can’t be addressed with proper fluids and internal dyes, we can use cosmetics and colored lighting to help mask the green.
Fun fact: old school embalmers perpetuated a belief that we could flush jaundiced bodies with milk before injecting embalming fluid. That’s just preposterous. Don’t do that!
#HisAndHearsePress #StPatricksDay #Green #StPaddysDay #StPattysDay #WearGreen #Jaundice #Embalming #MortuaryScience #MortuarySchool #Formaldehyde #Glutaraldehyde #Funeral
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CW: What Happens to Dead Bodies with Catheters, Ostomies, Casts, & Halos?
#FuneralFactFriday: Catheters, Ostomies, Casts, & Halos
(yes, I'm continuing the "cat" theme, don't @ me)All kinds of people die, in all kinds of conditions. Some die mid-repair. Hospitals provide treatment with the assumption their patient will live. If the patient dies anyways, the body can be left with remnants of the treatments. This leads to surprises for embalmers when we open the body bags.
We see common things like tracheostomies, breathing tubes, IVs, colostomies, surgical staples, pacemakers, and urinary catheters (which are all easily removed) and unusual things like halo braces (which have pins that are attached to the skull), surgical drains that end in grenade-like bulb reservoirs, orthopedic casts, and intraosseous IVs (a brutal looking needle that gets jammed into the bone marrow through the shin bone).
We don't have the specialized tools that hospitals use to remove some of these, so we basically figure it out on our own. Once the medical devices are removed and disposed of, we fix the resulting holes or incisions. First we treat them with chemicals, almost cauterizing them. We can fill them with absorbent preservative powders and cotton, then suture them closed. A layer of sealer can be applied on top, and if there's still a risk of leakage, we can supplement with Saran wrap or plastic garments concealed beneath the clothing.
#HisAndHearsePress #Embalming #Embalmer #MortuaryScience #MortuarySchool #MedicalInterventions #Death #Funeral