Hurricanes

Having made the move to a small town after working in a big city, I find myself increasingly bored. There isn't as many ways to find trouble (or cause it), there isn't as much room to run, and there is a lot less work. Think about it- how many people die a week in a college town of less than 18 thousand? So I have been trying to think of ways to take up more of my time. Obviously working 6 days a week with the dead isn't an option. Even doing runs for the morgue wouldn't fill up the void. And, no, the morgue isn't hiring for all of you wondering.

I've considered going back to school and starting EMT training. I already have a good grasp on medicine and a better one on anatomy... but there is a pretty huge conflict of interest in the field of health care and death care. Besides, if I saw someone with minimal functioning, why would I want to save them? Why would anyone want to be a vegetable, hooked to machines for the rest of their lives? I would have a problem not simply driving some of these people straight to the morgue or mortuary just to save time (and have something to do later). So I am pretty close to nixing that idea.

While reading my spam mail (yes, I occasionally do that), I came across an old newsletter from DMORT (Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team) and started thinking about joining their plight. I wanted to work Katrina, but was in some legal trouble and couldn't get down there. I think, now, I would be able to go on a pass... and it's supposed to be a terrible hurricane year. The thought of getting to work with floaters and rapidly decaying bodies excites me. I need to fill out some paperwork and talk to an attorney, but this is something I am rather sure I am going to be doing. I can't wait for hurricane season.

Oil, Roads, Coronors

Have any of you watched the live feed of the BP oil 'leak'? They are claiming that the 3.8 million liter a day leak is stopped, and what we are now seeing is mud coming out... but even if I believed them, that number is staggering for the last few weeks. I couldn't help but think about it while stuck driving in traffic on the freeway today.

I admit that I don't drive much, but with my hybrid I only go through a tank every 3-5 weeks. I know most people are unwilling or claim they can't get a hybrid, but come on... do you really need to drive that whale of a car that eats a gallon of gas every 23 miles? And it's memorial day weekend here in the states, so more people are out driving around. I can't help but wonder how many of them think about the major catastrophe we just had with BP while filling their tanks and driving miles on end for no apparent reason. Hell, I try to not use plastic because I think its manufacturing takes too much oil- yet everyone else seems to take oil for granted.

Another thing I was thinking about (and was why I was in traffic) is all the fucking road construction going on. At first I thought it had something to do with the city readying itself for the 2010 World Equestrian Games. Then I saw the "Put America To Work!" signs. Seriously? Let's spend our tax dollars overpaying under-qualified workers while fucking up the flow of traffic indefinitely. But in the long run encourage people to drive more which will increase the dependence on oil. In turn, letting us stay at war longer so that we can get a firmer grasp on the 55 percent we import. Fuck me.

When I saw this I had an undying desire to run the workers over with my little car (which is now for sale so I can buy an all electric car). I figure my defense could be that I was also 'Putting America To Work!'. Coroners and morticians need work too.

I Know

I know buckling up and wearing a helmet doesn't always save you.

I know embalming. Sometimes I think I have always done this, even before I was born. It fits me. It brings me closer to something bigger in this life.

I know that for the little baby I embalmed not to long ago (her death caused by a savage beating) my table was probably the only quiet place in the world she had ever experienced. Quiet at last. No more punishment for that little one.

I know the string tension on my piano is nearly 30 tons.

I know that is you use too strong a Formalin index on a jaundice case that the skin will turn from yellow to green.

I know the world is fragile, full of shadows and fears... many people fill it with regrets and should-haves. Heavy and dark. The curtains are drawn and there is an IN door, but no way out. And I know I will never see it this way.

I know a person will kill themselves by any means necessary when they decide their life should end.

I know there is nothing better than a chestnut mare and a comfortable saddle after a long day.

I know my space will always be orderly. Not a single thing out of place. No old magazines, not trash, and no maggots.

I know that hospitals have birthing floors and morgues.

I know bodies found in water usually smell the worse, but all flesh is messy.

I know west coast and east coast funeral homes only remotely resemble one another in the fact that they both dispose of dead human bodies.

On Being A Mortician

As a mortician, I aspire to raise arteries, conduct funerals, and dress the dead to the best of my ability (and secretly huff Formalin... haha Just kidding). The goal being to replicate the appearance of health and vigor by way of cosmetics, wax, and arterial dyes. These things are bigger than any words I can speak to a family, and for that reason I often speak lightly. I can take a body that was ravaged by quick trauma or lingering disease, with born spots and sunken eyes and fractures and dehydrates cheeks- and turn them into peaceful images in fresh clothing and contented expressions.

During college we are taught throughout the program to sculpt different facial features out of clay. You have to learn every features shape and contours, to learn to recreate mutilated, amputated or deformed features for viewing. If I remember correctly, the assignments started with noses, them moved to ears, eyelids, lips, and finally full facial proportions and lines. Our final test to be certified in the restorative arts was to sculpt an entire head out of wax, based on a photograph of someone of our choice. An entire semester sculpting, and we were graded as if we were fine arts students... on proportions, measurements, and aesthetic appeal. Trust me in that it was quite an endeavor.

All morticians, hell, all death care workers, are cut from the same cloth. There are many types, though. The elegant and well-dressed, the experienced and authentic, the word-savvy and confident, the functional alcoholic, the one obsessed with artistic detail, and the clumsy and unsure (typically referred to simply as 'intern'). Yet we all chose this career path. Some chose it to carry on the family business, but those truly dedicated (not that I am biased) find this path on their own. They just know that they want to stand with a clear conscience and lay hands on lost lives and their mourners.

How can this desire be explained to an outsider?

How Death Molded My Opinion On Abortion

Many years ago when I was still rather new at my job, I had a woman carrying an eight month old fetus come into the mortuary. She had bypassed the morgue as she was an obvious suicide and bypassed the hospital because by the time someone found her the baby was long dead.

I didn't know she was a suicide until after I had already started on the body. Seeing as how I had interned at the morgue and was a certified morgue tech, I was asked if I could handle removing the fetus, embalming both mother and baby, and arranging them in the coffin. I figured it wasn't going to be a problem. Sure, I had never embalmed anyone younger than 6yo, but how hard could it be? Harder than I thought. I had a lot of experience in the morgue, and a fair amount of experience in the mortuary, but had never done anything like embalming a baby who had never taken a breath of air. Removing the baby was relatively simple. I remember wondering why OB's get the big bucks for doing C-sections. I guess there are higher stakes when working with the living... higher insurance too.

Moving on- the jugular is anterior to the carotid, and very fragile. Even more so on a baby that was never born. I kept telling myself 'the artery is located along the posterior medial aspect of the lower third of the sternocleidomastoid muscle' over and over again. As I was digging around, trying to uncover the vein, I ran through it with my aneurism hook. Thick blood oozed out of the broken vein, filled the incision and dripped on the table like cold syrup. The heart may have been stopped, but the jugular is a natural drainage point, so puncturing it causes a bloody mess. I moved to the femoral, cursing. I found myself wondering how this woman and what was most definitely a child, not a fetus, died. Before starting the first and last bath this baby would ever have I glanced at his mothers information.

The family was Catholic, the woman had gotten pregnant (didn't say whether it was consensual, incestuous or rape), didn't want the baby but family pressure had kept her from an abortion, depression followed, but overall she had been a happy girl... this was her third suicide attempt in six months. I guess third time is the charm, eh? Of course there were markers on her body that indicated a different story than what had been written. There was no evidence of abuse, but she had scars indicative of a cutter and many scars between her toes. I questioned (silently) whether one or more of her 'attempts' had been accidental drug overdoses. But it is not my place to question, just embalm. I continued on my work, all the time wondering why this womans mother wanted her to be buried holding a child she had never wanted. I almost wanted to feel sorry for her. She killed herself trying to get away from the baby, but instead was laid in her final bed with him... tragic.

Before this case found its way to me, I didn't really have an opinion on abortion. This changed it for me. If she had felt like that was a viable option, would she have killed herself? Or was she depressed to begin with and just waiting for something to push her over the edge? I, of course, don't have the answer to that. I never met her while she was living and you can only learn so much after death. I am curious to know what pro-lifers opinion is on this situation... if this was your daughter would you have let her abort her son to possibly change the course of events?

A Cure For AIDS

Let's face it... billions of dollars a year are spent medical research. On the forefront of the research is cancer and AIDS. Less than 5 percent of cancer is genetic, it has mainly to do with lifestyle choices, so I am not going to touch on that right now because that needs its own blog. But AIDS is a different story. We know EXACTLY what causes it and how to prevent it- yet 33.2 million people were living with it in 2007... I'm sure that number has gone up. Generally people live 20 years (with medication) after initial HIV infection. Each medication in the AIDS cocktail cost between $200 and $2300 a month.

I don't really care how people spend their money, but this obviously isn't a cure. There IS a cure for AIDS, but humanitarians everywhere are going to have a shit-fit when I suggest it: Round them up and kill them. Sure, a slight few of those people are 'innocent'. They were born to an AIDS infested crack whore mother who got it when she was raped by her AIDS infested heroin using dealer. Maybe a nurse got it by sloppy blood handling (and perhaps it wasn't their sloppy handling). But in general, these people know how they got it and chose to live that way... and let's admit it, NOBODY is actually innocent.

But I may have gotten off my point: Medical research and medication is expensive, bullets are cheap.

Fat vs. Thin

I've decided that fat people have it easy- yeah, you get made fun of for being fat, and if you're really fat you smell like yeast... but all you have to do it sit around and eat. Eat when you're bored, eat when you're lonely, eat when someone makes a joke about fatties...

Being skinny is a lot harder. I had an old grandmotherly woman stop me while I was jogging in place at an intersection and hand me a cupcake. "Yer skin an bones, you need ta eat little one." And hands me a fucking cupcake! I considered smashing the cake in the woman's face, but the light changed so I ran off instead and threw the cupcake in the nearest trashcan. (I highly doubt it was vegan.)

And when you're fat and go to the doctor, nine times out of then he isn't going to be like "dude, you're a Fatty McLumpkins! You need to stop eating and start running like a Thoroughbred!" But it's a travesty if you come in with a BMI of 16. "OMG, you're too skinny, you need to eat. You must have an eating disorder. Let's send you to inpatient treatment to cure it." What the hell? I am 2 points under where I should be. If you told someone who had a BMI of 28 that they needed to go into inpatient treatment to get their weight under control more than half the fucking country would suddenly be in a hospital.

I don't go around telling you not to sit on the couch and eat double bacon cheeseburgers, so don't tell me to not run 15 miles a day and to stop being vegan.

Good Grief

When you graduate with a Funeral Service and Mortuary Science degree- you end up taking a lot of grief psychology classes. It's just one of the three things your teachers expect you to learn (along with embalming and business). Before taking these classes I, being one who has never and never will experience grief, though that grief was just sadness. I didn't believe the professor when he was telling us all the responses people have. I've been personally blamed for the situation, seen families turn quarrelsome against each other and staff, people having full breakdowns every time you try to discuss anything about the death, individuals who do nothing but make jokes, one who asked to watch the process and those who show no emotion about it whatsoever.

Last year, in early spring, I had a guy on my slab who had been in a hit and run accident. His skull was crushed as was most of his chest. I was thoroughly fascinated, but being the highly intuitive person I am (lol), I knew his family would not appreciate an open casket, so that was the recommendation I made. His wife... mother? Maybe it was his sister, I don't remember. Anyway, the person who was taking care of the arrangements flipped out and started throwing things when I said he was in no shape for an open casket funeral. She called me incompetent and a few other not so flattering things before I agreed to try to make him look a little more like a human and less like roadkill (which, in fact, he was). Three hours and several pounds of styrofoam, plaster and filler later, he looked pretty good. A few days later, after the embalming and cosmetics and blah blah blah, the whole family came in to view. The wife/mother/sister who had made the decision freaked out and swung her purse into his face, crushing it again, basically freaking out and saying it looked too much like him and she couldn't handle it. I had to restrain myself from beating the crap out of her...

Grief makes people react in strange ways, and I don't care how long I am in the business... I will never understand it.

Old Habits

Most people go their whole lives without the pleasure of knowing the feel of dead flesh. I remember the first dead animals, a cat, that I ever held. It was so cold, stiff and lifeless. Most people would instinctively withdraw from the alien feeling. All I could think of was that the cat could feel nothing, yet I could feel it. It was a strange and pleasing realization.

Over the years I have caused many deaths with my bare hands (snakes have to eat), prepped human cadavers for burial, cut all sorts of animals and people open for necropsy and autopsy, dressed the dead, cleaned the dead, skinned the dead (animals) and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

Sometimes I overlook that I have the perfect job for me. I get caught up in petty political power plays and forget why I am in the business. Today, as I was folding the hands of a young woman over her abdomen, I was reminded why I always smell like formalin and put up with the weasel-faced-twerp. It's calming to be with the dead, familiar. It's the living I am unacquainted with.

You Are What You Drive

I judge you by what you drive.

If you drive a Hummer you don't recycle and couldn't give two shits about the environment (fucking americans).

If you drive a Jeep that isn't in the Wrangler family, you're a yuppy wanna-be.

If you drive a Wranger you are outdoorsy but couldn't give a damn about saving the environment.

If your car is older then you are, you live with your parents and are too lazy to get a job. Exception to the previous is if you drive a reconditioned classic- in which case you are trying to relive your childhood.

If you drive a fancy sports car you either have a small penis or penis envy.

If you drive a pseudo-sports care (like a Miata) you are pretending you're rich, but in reality barely make over minimum wage.

If you drive a mommy-mobile you need a lesson on contraception.

If you drive anything less than a 2500 (or 250 in Ford) truck or ANY truck with a short bed I want to beat the crap out of you. That isn't a fucking truck, moron.

There are more, but I can't see any other type of car out the window at this moment. Basically, if you don't drive a hybrid I am going to judge you harshly.