*Last Words: A Glossary for Death and Funerals* is available FREE on my website! This 80 page resource defines 460 words found in death care professions, including funeral lingo, embalming equipment, grief, religious customs, funeral options, and death/dying terminology. Perfect for:

Authors/writers, mortuary science students, apprentices, potential future morticians, medical/hospice caregivers, and curious people!

www.LouisePachella.com/glossary

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#WordyWednesday: Gravity Embalming

An old-timey method of embalming that predates electricity but can still be used in a pinch today.

A large glass jar is suspended over the body with a hose leading to a large artery. Embalming fluid flows into the body at a very slow and steady rate.

Raising the height of the jar increases the pressure (approximately 0.43 pounds of pressure per foot of height above the injection site).

#HisAndHearsePress #Embalming #MortuaryScience #MortuarySchool #Embalmer #Undertaker #Mortician #FuneralDirector #Gravity

#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!

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Today is National Barbie Day. Why don’t we have a funeral director Barbie yet?!?

Barbie has made great strides in the past decade, showing children that girls can grow into any number of career paths. Women in STEM? Yes please! We still don’t have a mortician option though. Since mortuary schools are now over 70% women, it’s high time we were represented as a valid profession to aspire to.

Want to sign a petition for Mattel to create Undertaker Barbie? Here ya go!

https://www.change.org/p/mattel-tell-mattel-to-create-a-funeral-director-barbie

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#WordyWednesday: Shrouding Women

When you think of morticians, you might conjure images of creepy old men in black suits. But did you know that they've only been "in charge" of the dead for the last century or so? Before that, men were typically responsible for building coffins and digging graves. Body preparation fell to the women!

Women were already tasked with nursing the sick, distributing herbs, and aiding in childbirth, so bathing and dressing the dead was a natural progression. Since it was a duty that demanded care, gentleness, and propriety, men were simply unsuited to the task. Enter the shrouding women.

Many neighborhood women became skilled and knowledgeable in the art of preparing the dead. They understood the weather's effect on decomposition and how to tend to bodies suffering from various conditions. They lent their expertise to those in need, not for monetary compensation but as an act of community.

Duties included preparing a cooling board (sometimes an ironing board or barn door placed over chairs), washing and dressing the corpse, closing the eyes and mouth (coins on eyes and jaws secured shut with tied rags or forked sticks propped against the breast bone), and otherwise arranging the body into a restful pose.

Commercialization of death care after the Civil War led cabinetmakers to evolve from coffin builders to embalmers. They wrested control of bodies away from women, claiming women were weak, delicate, and unable to tolerate the sight of blood. As the men rose into the ranks of professionals, women were relegated to the sidelines of death care. They became decorations. Trade journal advertisements portrayed men doing funeral work and women as objects of beauty. The foundation was laid for men to dominate the industry for the next 100 years.

Fortunately, we've come full circle and women are entering funeral service in droves. Over 70% of graduating mortuary science classes are women. Turns out we *can* handle some blood after all.

#HisAndHearsePress #InternationalWomensDay #WomensDay #WomenInSTEM #WomenSupportingWomen #DeathCare #FuneralService #MortuaryScience #MortuarySchool #DeathPositive #FuneralDirector #Embalmer #Mortician #Undertaker

Happy International Women’s Day! Shout out to all of my sisters (not just my cis-ters) 💃🏿💃🏽💃🏼💃🏻

Today we celebrate our social, economic, and political achievements, plus bring awareness to gender parity. The World Economic Forum predicts that we won’t achieve global gender equality until 2133!

It’s not all bad news though. Woman in funeral service have been making great strides over the past 20 years. Graduating mortuary science classes are now comprised of over 70% women! The future of funeral directing is most certainly female. 💪🏻

#HisAndHearsePress #InternationalWomensDay #WomensDay #WomenSupportingWomen #TheFutureIsFemale #TransWomenAreWomen #MortuarySchool #MortuaryScience #FuneralDirector #Embalmer #Mortician

#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

I found some cool funeral trinkets! Check out these enamel pins from Demonic Pinfestation. I’ve never seen an embalming machine pin, and look! The little casket opens! I love them ☠️🖤⚰️

See more at www.DemonicPinfestation.com

(No, I’m not getting anything out of this. Just sharing cool treasures!)

#HisAndHearsePress #EnamelPins #DemonicPinfestation #Funeral #Embalmer #Mortician #MortuarySchool #MortuaryScience #Casket #EmbalmingMachine #Goth

#WordyWednesday: Viscerock

Not all embalming chemicals are liquid! Formaldehyde and other accessory chemicals come in powders and gels too.

My favorite is a product with the awesome name "Viscerock," which dries, firms, and preserves tissue (especially in autopsied cases).

It's also the name of my future death metal band 🤘🏻

#HisAndHearsePress #Embalming #MortuaryScience #MortuarySchool #Embalmer #Formaldehyde #FormaldehydeFree #Viscerock #DodgeChemicalCompany #ThanksThatsMyBandNameNow

#WordyWednesday: Aneurysm Hook

A stainless-steel embalming instrument for digging through muscles and tissue to find arteries and veins. About seven inches long, it has a handle and a blunted or tapered point on the hook end. Some designs feature a wavy handle to slip underneath and hold arteries up. The hook end is used to dissect through and scrape off tissues that hold arteries and veins in place.

Aneurysm hooks are usually used in pairs and can also be helpful multipurpose tools during embalming. They're also known as aneurysm needles.

Apprentices and mortuary science students are sometimes gifted an engraved aneurysm hook upon completion of their training. Unfortunately, I was not a lucky recipient. I'm not salty about it. Nope. Not at all. I'm fine.

#HisAndHearsePress #Embalming #Funeral #Mortician #MortuarySchool #MortuaryScience #Vocabulary #ToolsOfTheTrade