CLOSING MOUTHS POSTMORTEM (Ask a Mortician)

when people picture a dead body they picture one lying in an open casket or on an autopsy table on a crime show and it's all like that's a dead body that's been worked on real dead bodies are all like which you know ah that's confronting that's hard that's real death which is why the first thing the funeral director or mortician will do when they find out a family wants to see the dead body is close the eyes close the mouth this question came from another mortician named Erik and it was such an insider II death question but you guys love insider death stuff so I thought it was perfect are you a suture or needle injector kinda gal Erik is asking how I close my mouths when I first started in the industry I was a needle injector kind of gal this is a needle injector here's how it works so that little hole at the tip of the needle injector you stick this small pointy pin with a wire attached to it with the deceased lying on the prep room table you pull back their fur and lower lips to reveal their maxilla on the top and mandible on the bottom anatomy 101 you're welcome the needle injector actually drives those little pins into the gums cheek I would always do four pins to in the top gums to when the bottom gums then you would pull up the jaw and secure it into place by twisting the wires together like bread bag ties then you tuck the wires away back into the mouth where you can't see them and theoretically you're in business I say theoretically there because I found that with older people or people with extremely atrophied or recessed gums which wearing dentures can definitely cause there was always the threat that the pins might pop out of place and that's the last thing that you'd want happening during a viewing it never happened during any of my viewings but the thought haunted now the suture method of closing the mouth I didn't actually learn until I got to mortuary school it's intense you start with one of these big curvy needles loaded up with suture thread then you basically so the mouth shut there are a couple of different ways to go about it all of which are going to be very difficult to demonstrate without me looking completely ridiculous I'm just going to look ridiculous okay so the needle starts behind the bottom teeth goes through and comes out the bottom of the chain turn back around needle goes up through the same hole this time coming out in front of the teeth this allows you to gently pull up the jaw into place then the needle goes up into the left nostril through the septum down through the right nostril bring the draw together and tie the strings shut uh if the person's dentures have gone missing or they just don't have any teeth you can incorporate these guys which are called mouth formers they go over the gums behind the lips kind of like a sports mouth guard usually the first one you put in is way too big and it makes them look like a monkey person and you're like oh sorry mr. Johnston and you take it out and cut it down until it looks more natural at this point you're probably wondering Caitlin which method do you use now and the answer is I try to use neither of them because our funeral-home tries to work with less invasive more natural methods we usually use the painfully simple rolled-up towel beneath the chin method the other option is to take a small towel or scarf put it underneath the chin and tie it either on top of the head or right behind the head now these methods would look really out of place if someone was in the full suit and tie in the casket but since we tend to lay our bodies out either in the home or in our viewing room covered and like white sheets and flower petals it really doesn't look that strange because it's more of the vibe but it's what the family wants so even though we don't embalm at our funeral home if they want dad in the suit and tie and for it to mimic a conventional wake as much as possible we'll do the mouth suture because I still have the bad memories from the needle injector - - they never go away normally I like to have a question at the end of my videos but what am I going to ask how do you close your mouths I guess the question would be how do you feel about the mouth being sewn shut is it a matter of doesn't hurt I'm dead whatever looks good or does it feel invasive to you see that's a question good job Kaitlyn brought to you with support from people's Memorial Association and the coop funeral home and donations from viewers like you in doing these little patreon pitches at the end of my videos I want to make it clear that none of that money goes to my personal bank account it's not like I'm saving up to buy a deaf video Lamborghini or Tesla but what the money does go to is to the nonprofit and to now help pay the people who are doing more research for the videos and helping edit the videos even twenty-five or fifty cents of video really helps the deaf positive movement so thank you death Wings

Channel: Caitlin Doughty

Views: 3,983,147

Keywords: ask a mortician, caitlin doughty, mortician, funeral director, embalming, needle injector, order of the good death, wake, viewing, suture, green burial, funeral industry, behind the scenes, needles, corpse, dead body

Id: L8RtdsKQYZg

Length: 5min 24sec (324 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2016