Embalming Room Tour by a funeral director

hey good morning guys so it's bright and early and the fluorescent lights here in the prop room so it's prop room and bombing room guys where the embalming happens a lot of times it's where the dressing cascading also takes place so bear with me I've got a little tripod rigged up system here that I'm going to use as I'm showing you things as well so this is where I feel like magic I guess happened I'm the funeral directing business so many awesome reconstructive things can happen here so many great moments where you can give back a loved one so I love I love what can happen in this room I love what people can be skilled and gifted at doing in this room so just a little plug because I do I really love the embalming aspect of this business so I'm going to start with kind of when I come in the prep room I know I had a question on what you mean change his shoes so I had posted something about I had my embalming shoes in my car because I keep them in a bag in the back of my car in case I get called in I have them with me and so someone asked about why I have different shoes well it's all part of PPE which is personal protective equipment so a lot of people use TPE and their businesses for different aspects of things that you may do in the prep room and bombing room it is the gown the gloves which I have on and then this case I change into just some general little shoes I have a dollar a little bag from the dollar store that I keep them in that's plastic-lined and so that way when I come in the front room I put them on so when I'm not wall me if there's any drips splatters anything of chemicals or bodily fluids or anything I know they stay on the shoes they stay in the bag they don't go into my house and I feel like I'm even more conscious of this now that I have little ones at home so that way none of that goes get stretched into my home it can all just stay right in that little plastic bag and stay in my car we also work downs steering system works here so again plastic goes on in the front time up in the back and then you wear that while you're doing the embalming just protect from anything get on your clothes especially a lot of feeling objectors I have on their suits when they're doing this and so they want to protect their students that while they're you know prep them because they have to go back out and meet with family or have to go back out and direct a funeral or something like that so oftentimes we've got to make sure we really protect what we're wearing because it might be the only thing we have or may have already dirtied an outfit that day and are in our backup outfit so all right so I'm going to just kind of show you what I do every day well when I'm in the prep room which is not in every side okay so this is just kind of a general landscape of the prep room and I'm going to show you kind of what everything is here there's my little easel stand I have rigged up so I kind of talked about personal protective equipment this is something a lot of embalmers also wear just a mask that helps kind of clean the air that we breathe in to help reduce some of the chemicals that we breathe not uncommon for a lot of different vocations that need to just keep the air clean that they're breathing in so this is a prep table so a deceased is brought in and they're put on this table sometimes they're porcelain sometimes they're stainless steel like this this is more often than not what you'll see maybe in movies or things like that I think they tend to choose them because they do look a little colder really sterile but there's typically a water system hooked up here because there's water constantly running during the embalming to keep fluids moving down and out and just have a nice water source for the embalmer if they need it if there is any spills or anything like that this is called a head block or a positioning block you can see it's got some different sizing divots and and rounded edges and things so this is used the head would cradle and rest here and so depending on if you need to kind of tilt the head high or low I'm sure you've all been to a funeral home where the head was cranked up really high too far or maybe looking back kind of called it's called stargazing when their heads back way too far it's kind of a term that we use so that sees there then there's positioning blocks used on the arms so elbows would rest here to get the hands up together on the chest oftentimes we'll use ones maybe down on the feet as well but a lot of times you'll just have a kind of stack of different kind of positioning blocks down here that can be used so the body is first washed and then hair washed mouth eyes nose all sanitized and turn you back around to me so mouth nose eyes all sanitized oftentimes with just a disinfectant spray not Windex but it's a disinfectant sprays it's for embalming helps just kill all the germs that may come in there's still make scary germs out there that bodies can have on them especially coming from hospital or nursing home that like MRSA and c-diff things that we do not want to catch because they're they're highly contagious and just make you super super sick and we just don't want to get them because in it's not always translated to us that somebody has that until maybe we see it on that certificate or it's told to us by the family so it's not always the best communication system within the medical world that you know things get passed on so we have to just make sure and treat everybody as if they're contagious as if they do have disease or germs or whatever so we does in fact clean the body and then kind of start positioning the features we mean positioning the features closing the eyes closing the mouth trying to get the most natural look we can on their face so I clothing these little buggers are called eye caps they may look a little bit because I'm holding them close to the camera it's just a little plastic it's almost like a little contact and it has these little pokey grooves if you can see them so when it's put on it goes under the eyelid just like a contact would those little pokey grooves just hold the eyelid kind of down extra security to help hold that eye closed and so one goes in each and each eye so mouth closure there's a couple different ways folks closed mouth there's something called a needle injector I don't personally use a needle injector so it's this little doohickey and one of these little wires there's a whole bundle here let me grab one out for you all right so there's this little bracket and there's a little wire attached to it so that needle injector you load this in and then for like a better work shoots it implants this into the upper here is no lower here inside under the lips and then the metal is tied together to bind the mouth closed so it doesn't pop open some folks use suture so they sew the mouth closed and I've talked about this before it's not sewing the lips but it's sewing up through or down through I hook the mandible and the septum so there's no risk of it breaking ever it doesn't break through tissue because you're hooked on bone and don't know why that's get a little dark in a process so I can use my hands more and so done there we go trying to get the light right sorry guys and then so once the mouth is closed up sutured oftentimes if someone's missing their teeth you got to try and get that natural you know side when you look at someone from the side that kind of rounded because without the teeth it sinks in and it's flat and it's just not natural so this is called a mouth former and it goes in the mouth like that and give the teeth effects for someone who maybe doesn't have their teeth doesn't have their dentures doesn't have that natural or maybe they haven't wear their dentures in you know six months to a year because they've been in a nursing home and they didn't want to or they've lost thirty pounds and so you put in those dentures and they look huge on the person so with this we can cut it down a little bit and make it a more natural mouth look for the person so that is kind of closing up the features and then yes we do use glue to glue the mouth glue the eyes and it is all for the sake of the mouth nut come and open the eyes not pop and open things of that nature we do use going in the cupboard here so gorilla glue there is a glue that's made just for deceased individuals which is one of these is a little pin there in case it seals up just like glue at home trying to get one out just another type of glue but I do know a lot of people who just used Krazy Glue or gorilla glue or whatever you can buy it so a local hardware store because it kind of works the same and it's a little cheaper than some of the stuff that's made just for the industry so I know a lot of people that use a lot of different variety of things so once the features are set then we need to do the actual injecting of the fluid so this is turn you back around here so I can kind of give you a look all right so this is the prep machine this is the embalming machine there's a few different styles this one is all where you don't see the fluid during the embalming nothing too exciting it's just an empty look like a sink from the outside and then just a water nozzle for easy fill there are several different knobs your on/off you've got pressure your pressure knob and then this is flow rate whoops this is flow rate and your pressure knob some embalmers swear by high-pressure some like low pressure some like a high flow rates on like low it's all personal preference and what people find that they like to use and different bodies merit different levels of everything this holds about three gallons two and a half to three gallons and that's about what prep machines use because a standard body you should use about two and a half to three gallons of fluid and then you need to mix the fluid within it so I'm going to go back over to the cupboards that I had open so this is our one look at a cover that would have all the different fluids in it there's many different chemical companies and same type of thing different embalmer swear by different chemical companies so in what I was saying so let's go with three gallons of fluid a lot of times you would use this is what's called the arterial fluid that means it is the main formaldehyde based fluid or sometimes glutaraldehyde based fluid that is used during embalming you would use about eight ounces of this per gallon so a bottle and a half there's other fluids that are for balancing the PHA of the water different water gives you different output there's some that are for breaking up blood clots to help for drainage to get the blood out most effectively water softener again this one kind of looks like a pepto-bismol and it has kind of a second color built into it just to help change the color of the deceased through the in this part of the the fluid there's some that's for a demux so edema is when the tissue has fluid built up in it if you've seen some older folks and their their legs or their ankles or their feet are really kind of swollen and heavier than the rest of them appears a lot of times they'll have fluid that's just building up in them and so this will help get some of that fluid out and dry that out for preservation there's also one that's for folks who are dehydrated so this will add moisture into their tissue so that they don't dehydrate out during the visitation services then there is cavity fluid so cavity fluid I will explain that in a little bit when I talk about aspirating so I don't want to get ahead of myself but that goes into the main cavity of the person which is the stomach area the digestive area where all your internal organs are so there's also different dyes that can be mixed in to the fluid just help with coloring there's a yellow kind of a yellow orange herb ace there's a Pinker based on typically females get a Pinker base meals get a little bit orange or yellow you have different nationalities different skin tones so it's all a big chemistry you know experiment and so an embalmer has to really mix up the right amounts of everything in the right coloring and and so forth for each individual to get the right results and typically if we've got specialty cases like the edema or dehydration or decomposition where someone's been dead for a long time then we have to factor those in as well and hopefully be able to get a good mix of fluid to get the good results that we want to preserve that person for as long as we can so that fluid is mixed up and as you can tell there's a lot of water it's you know with three gallons you're not putting in a huge amount of embalming fluid so it's not like you're just pumping and volume fluid that water is using as acting as the vessel to get that fluid distributed in the body and embalming fluid works for the most part by it kind of - it goes gaseous into out into your tissue so that's fluid you know the water gets it through your body and it guesses out into your tissues to do the preservation so so we use so as the persons on the table then we use oh I don't have that scuffles not loaded so a scalpel so the blade is not on here needs to be replaced a lot of times people don't use a new blade on each individual so the incision is done on the neck here typically who that looks really big oh maybe two inches three inches and the carotid and the jugular are right here those are the main artery and vein that an embalmer is going to use to do the embalming they raise both of those foods those in the artery blood comes out the vein and so if you don't get distribution in certain areas or body in your hands and your feet you have to raise other arteries other veins so let's say I had to raise the one in the neck and maybe this hand was just not getting fluid and I had to raise the radial right in the wrist that would be called a two-point so that's how we refer you know if somebody was a four point or a six pointer an eight point or however many points is how many times we had to raise the vessels in different spots of the body most people is just takes one but I've had numerous four six point bodies lately talked in past videos about how sometimes parts of the body seem to be done before the individual because of medications and things like that so you see a lot more where the blood is settled a lot more or you just not getting the distribution because the system was not working correctly for a longer period of time and so it just creates more more kind of hurdles once the preparation needs to be done in here in the prep room so so into the artery so this is the tube that hooked up to the prep machine and so this once again kind of looks huge when I hold it up this goes into the artery and then it's clamped in so this is just how it is injected in and it's about the width of kind of a standard normal artery but normal is there are so many variables thanks Kristen there's so many variable than in what an artery is going to look like huge small hard and crunchy if it's been filling with it with plaque and with some bad stuff so that is how the fluid goes in and then there's different ways when the blood comes out sometimes it's called free drain and you just kind of let it go and it goes down the drain some people put it Ben so it goes through the tube right down into the drain so it doesn't drain out on the table personal preference for each embalmer and yes it goes right down the main drain just like your sink at home it's the same system that goes to same exit point same drains so okay so the that happens while that's happening the body is means washed and massaged so we're trying to help that circulation get going because the heart's not pumping the heart's not doing the job of getting that stuff moving so we as the embalmers need to be helping that along so we're trying to push the embalming fluid in and hopefully get the blood flowing out and try and make sure that it's in every part of the body I'm gonna get you propped again this will work okay make sure that's in every part of the body so that way we get good color in the face good color enhance the most natural color that we can get you can tell from the tissue in the body you can kind of pinch like a back of a hand gently and as that tissue will start firming up as you're embalming so you can see the results pretty quickly that's what it's doing but you can tell once there's fluid in all of all the extremities once it's in the feet the hands the face is cleared and looks great so you can tell when that's all been done so let me show you a couple different tools I guess that we use so let's see force that pinching I use these I'll put cotton around them when I clean the nose and to use to clean out the nose I mean think about when you go to a visitation and you walk up to the person you're looking up their nose literally so it's got to be clean got to be trimmed you know because that's definitely something that gets looked at UM now we've got clamps going on use these for different things sometimes if you've got a maybe the arteries frail it's breaking I'll clamp it just to make sure I don't lose it just different things that you can use these for clamping on the when you put the tube into the artery you clamp it on yeah neat I've got needles for sewing or suturing as it's called when it's a medical type of thing kind of look in the cupboards here and see what else we've got going for that part yeah so all kinds of different suture here shave cream I shave everybody females non female welcome to male females of male and really important to especially even shave women because it has meant eyes better when you do have to put makeup on then you're not looking at every little sign hair on their face that really shows under the light with makeup on it so very important to shave everybody shut up dove just shampoo conditioner a regular old shampoo conditioner conditioner especially because you've got a comb through all the hair especially really long hair it's you gotta comb through all of it and try and keep it from getting snarling and crazy so so then after that initial injection is done we do what's called aspirating kind of a not going for shock and awe here people but so there is a hydro aspirator is what most people use so through the water going through the machine it creates a suction and so what we're trying to do with aspirating is get all of the fluids and poop I guess essentially out of your system in your whole belly area in your cavity because that is the first spot where you decompose I've talked before if you see a deer on the side of the road and the belly is big and huge that's because that's the first part of a body that decomposes you fill with gases there and all sorts of junk so we want to get what is in the cavity out and get some fluid in there to preserve it so that body doesn't decompose so we use what's called a trocar to do that my step back so it doesn't look so scary because it is kind of big and crazy-looking it essentially is like a little needle big needle but it's got little holes at the top here now you can see through and this is put into the abdomen 2 inches over and 2 inches up from the belly button is what we're taught and the purpose is to try and puncture each internal organ and get out as much fluid as possible and that hooked up to the aspirator and so there's a suction on this when it's hooked up to twist up to a 2 and there's a suction so as your aspirating the fluids all coming out it's going through those those dollies and going out into the regular drain as well so I love having a clear tube so I can see what's coming out I can see when I've kind of gotten a pocket of fluid out and that way I kind of know when things are are done when it's I've drained as much as I can and I got out as much as I can so then it takes about 15-20 minutes sometimes some I know some people that they aspirate for 30 minutes that's it doesn't matter what's going on 30 minutes and that's what they're doing for 30 min was their aspirating so after they open this trocar is supposed to a short tube with that cavity fluid yeah talked about before and then great fluid is put back in just a drainage system it's a short tube you hook the bottle upside down here comes down the tube into here and it goes right into here because we want the straight fluid into the cavity because it's going to get to work and do its business most effectively when it's not watered down so all right and on if you guys have questions about what I'm saying please post them so um that's the trocar this part I think is the scare is that people don't know about and when this bad boy gets whipped out it's like oh my gosh don't ever involve me there's a lady wrote a book several years ago and she talked about this part of embalming and made it so horrific and that's when people flipped out about 10:00 and funerals and embalming and younger than yourself so after that's done then okay this is called a trocar button so in the hole that's made in the abdomen the small little hole this is placed in and so it's just screwed in essentially with this into the hole and that's what plugs it some people do suture it close but it is really just a little 1 centimeter hole that needs to be filled so that part's done and then also the incision in the neck is sutured up many different variations on sutures I actually just learned a new one about a month ago I had never seen and I was blown away because it was an awesome new way to suture and so there's like at the Crematory there's always something new to be learned when it comes to this stuff so then in the incision a lot of embalmers will use like a powder this is a quick sealing powder so this is put in because if there's any small leakage or anything that acts as an absorber and so it'll puff right up and kind of fill it in to try and keep from any leaking happening you know goal is that there's no leaking during visitation or services and that the bodies or the family doesn't have to see that happening because sometimes bodies purge especially that gas builds up in the stomach it's going to push out any or down and out anything that's in there and so come out the mouth the nose the lower places and so we want to keep that from happening and so that's kind of the main goal we do take precautions against that from happening so if a body is maybe extra leaky say for some reason maybe they continue to urinate or maybe they had a problem where they do have leakage out of their bottom there's kind of plastic pants that we can put on there's full plastic suits that we can put on individuals if needed just to prevent leaking into the clothing from going on and it literally looks like like a full pair of stockings or underwear things like that that are made just of plastic and that's just it's all about presentation like I said there's a lot kind of goes on behind the scenes that we're doing to make sure the body and the person looks they can for the family and that the family doesn't have to know that mom as we can poop and we couldn't get it to stop so we had to do this and so and it's nothing bad that we're doing to the deceased we're just trying to make it so she is looking her best and smelling her past and everything for the visitation if it makes sense hopefully so let me look around see what else I can show you guys without the camera falling all right so um you know let's see in here there is I wash station going back to the kind of protection you know there's my law things that we have to have and we have to use and so that's there in case you get any fluid in your eyes you know sometimes the pressure from the injection can shoot blood out and so we or can shoot fluid out one of the you know that the two that's put in can shoot back out and then the fluids just kind of spraying out or when you're aspirating that pressure system can reverse and so the internal fluids can start spraying out the end of the trocar these are things that they do happen and so that's why we wear what we wear and we try and protect your eye and protect our mouths and protect our clothing and everything there's a ventilation system also that's hopefully sucking out a lot of those fumes and fluid that comes because there's a lot more fluid exposure you know especially with an autopsy body when that the whole cavity is empty so there's no central you know the heart's not in there connecting everything so the food is more just free going into the when you're injecting you have to inject from inside the body down into the arms up into the head down into the legs well when that fluid comes back around it's just pooling up so it's more exposure for us to all those fluids rather than a enclosed system inside the body so there are definitely a lot more exposure when we do an autopsy body or a body donation body donations are becoming more and more problematic for the embalmer just because they are becoming more invasive when they go into to get the the organs in the tissue and so forth so there's a lot more exposure when it comes to that as well more more fluid that comes back out rather than goes where it needs to go essentially without getting too crazy into what I'm talking about they're also got so I'm moving quickly and we've got linens not very exciting got to show you up a like down here we've got some gloves but also have so let me get out sorry for the moves guys cosmetics so there are cosmetic kit that are created just for deceased because the chemical makeup of let's say you know oil of olay or anything is made for skin that is hotter and oilier than deceased so this makeup was created for there's you know deceased persons temperatures and skin kind of consistency and so on there are a lot of them plumbers that swear by Mary Kay or they swear by oil valet or whatever the brand is that they want to use and then there is cosmetics that is created just for juicy skin so I will use whatever is in the prep room I'm in because I do freelance so sometimes you know prep rooms have different types of makeup just like they have different types fluids so to speak and so you just kind of use what's what's there talking about skin so after the embalming we do put physical Kalon it's a massage cream it's a lotion that is for deceased skin and I've heard some crazy stories about people who died in the desert and we're dehydrated and the Balmer used just this stuff to kind of bring their tissue back to a normal normal texture because it's created and it's just to show you it's just literally white it's just a lotion it's just a lotion but it's made for a deceased skin because they're not going to absorb like lotions that you and I would use it's not you know the same tissue just like when you should when we shave some embalmers you shave gel I use shampoo because I just need that barrier between the skin and the razor because shave gels created to work with the heat of your skin and then since there's no heat with the disease it's not going to do its full job so so then once we're done embalming hairs brushed the cream is on the face and the hands the body is washed again and then they're covered with a sheet typically sometimes they're moved over to a dressing table but then we're done takes our two hours with autopsy body donation body sometimes can take 3-4 hours or two days where you have to come back the next day to finish so it just all depends on the the needs of the deceased and and kind of how things are going with with the embalming so kinda see if there's anything out and here that might be of interest we do have a a sharps container for scalpels and stuff you know there's cleaners they're soaked just to wash up the prep table when done I just pulled some stuff out so I'd have it out so I could talk about it got gloves any questions while I'm in here that anybody might have about the space at all yeah so that is just a brief overview of the embalming room it's hard for me to look at it with a perspective of it anything being odd to me because I've been working in this room for so many years that to me this is all just second nature um so I don't look at things as being I guess interesting to anybody else but they probably are I know I've been asked before and I'll go there about you know plugs for other areas of your body if they're leaking and there are such things that can be used but I have never used one or been in a program I don't think that maybe I have that pad one but I've never used them trying to look their skin tint let's see so this is tint that's brushed on the skin just to give a little bit Pinker part of the cosmetic process so you don't have to put like a foundation type cosmetic on you can just use the tint just to give it a little a little pink you know especially on a man you don't want to paint them up if you don't have to now there's some directors that they kind of do the same cosmetic procedure on every body that they get ready but I'm a less-is-more kind of girl too and so I try and use the least amount of things that I can when getting someone ready so I think that is the best overview I can go I hope that this has been a little informative and hopefully you learned a little something maybe it's way more scary to you than it was before maybe it's a little less scary I don't know but I've obviously answer any questions if you guys have them after this so just post them on this video I'll be happy to answer them happy to you know kind of do a follow-up if there's enough more questions so I hope to talk to you guys soon

Channel: Kari the Mortician

Views: 2,197,026

Rating: 4.5248671 out of 5

Keywords: funeral service, prep room, deceased, corpse, embalming room, kari northey, funeral home, burial, funeral director, cancerous, kari the mortician, funeral, cremation, embalming, formaldehyde, toxins, preservation, gluteraldehyde

Id: 33gRcPRlLG4

Length: 41min 45sec (2505 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2017