Mortician Answers Dead Body Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

yeah i don't know if i'll talk about them all but i got all sorts of fun blood draining devices and this one is for closing mouths kind of cool hi i'm victor m sweeney and i'm a licensed funeral director and mortician and this is mortician support [Music] this is a question from saint severin question for morticians when someone dies do you remove their poo or are we all buried with an unpoo'd poo that is such a good question more often than not your poo is up to you sometimes you you hear the myth that everybody uh poos themselves before they die that's not always the case sometimes it is for my purposes when i get someone back to the funeral home and i'm preparing them um if they have pooed then i'll clean them up if it's the case that they start pooing when pressure starts to build up in the abdomen then i stop what i'm doing i clean them up typically what i'll do is i'll actually flush out the bowels with the hose because the last thing you want to have happen is someone to start pooing and then they continue doing it when you can't control it jaded never won if a person wearing contacts dies does the mortician take them out shower thoughts yes historically i've always removed contact lenses because one of the things that we need to do of course is what we call set the features setting the features would mean that we close the mouth and we also need to close their eyes so we actually have a device that helps us do this these are called eye caps they're essentially spiky contact lenses that fit over the eyes and will actually grip the eyelid when we pull it down over those little burrs there i typically remove contact lenses um because those just get in the way of me doing what i need to do to set their features and provide a decent appearance for the family question from laney will my cat eat me when i die possibly hopefully i think the short answer to that is yes i've heard of that happening from colleagues of mine and as we all know cats being inferior to dogs they will do anything they are opportunists the question from vamp florence how do morticians not want to chug the embalming fluid these look like they taste like fruit loops well i really love the picture you have and i noticed you forgot the blue flavor embalming fluid is really colorful but i can assure you it is not tasty it smells awful as far as the coloring goes it is strange isn't it one of the reasons that a lot of these fluids are maybe red or other colors is so that the embalmer knows what they are without having to maybe read the label but you'll also notice that a couple of them are red when we push the blood out of the body in arterial embalming we're pushing out a red fluid so ideally we want to put a red fluid back in so we gain access to an artery typically we'll make an incision maybe in the neck or in the thigh and then we'll also gain access to a vein we open the artery we are going to have an embalming machine which acts as a pump and we're going to use this arterial tube something like this so this goes down the artery and then it's going to pump fluid through now your vein we are gonna open with either a large forceps or this device called a drain tube so this goes down the vein and then when we open it the blood will pour out the side of our device here and then we can control how quickly or how slowly we want the blood to leave the body when we have a deceased loved one they're going to look very very pale because the blood has stopped circulating so when we put in the the red blood the red fluid rather that's actually going to pink them up in some ways and make them look a little bit more alive this is a question from clementine okay full disclosure i'm fat and this is a legit question i'm not trying to be fat phobic but how do extremely obese people like i'm talking 400 pounds fit in a coffin do they make a plus size coffin or does a mortician like cut fat out of them and sew them back up gonna answer the second part of that question first no we do not remove fat and and sew someone back up everybody is buried intact if we can at all help it so we actually have caskets that are are made by our manufacturer to be oversized typically when someone passes away if they're larger we'll measure them at their elbows because those tend to be the parts that stick out the furthest and then determine what width of casket we will need to give them a more comfortable appearance c for chase do morticians put chapstick on the bodies or are they just sitting there casket open lips cracked out that's actually a great concern of ours is drying out not just the lips but after you die of course your body is not producing any oils so your skin can get quite dry we actually have a like a heavy face cream that we use on almost everybody that comes through in the interim between when they're embalmed and when we get them ready for their funeral and put their makeup on if we need it we always have that heavy face cream on to make sure that their lips don't dry out so as far as chapstick goes i've never put chapstick on a body but if someone really wanted me to i guess i i wouldn't say no here's a question from coco now i'm going on google looking up the weirdest stuff what do dead bodies smell like dead bodies smell awful rotting anything smells awful we are hardwired to think that dead human bodies smell bad and it's a smell you never forget i myself i went out to a nice restaurant to have some aged steak and i couldn't do it i love this username this is a question from future corpse aren't we all what do morticians do with our organs after an embalming what happens when they aren't donated when we do embalming all your organs just stay inside your body we can prepare them all internally after we finish the arterial embalming we have what's called the cavity embalming optimally with the cavity embalming you're trying to puncture the lungs the heart the intestines the stomach and then you're also going to try to shoot for the kidneys too we actually use what's called a trocar and i i have one here it's a hollow point spear essentially and it hooks up to what we call an aspirator so it's a it's a vacuum essentially insert this in the abdomen and then try to puncture all the hollow organs and then the vacuum will actually draw out all those nasty fluids if you donate your organs typically organ donations are handled by organ harvesting companies and they will actually work with a hospital or with me to transport a body where it needs to go and then they'll harvest the organs donate them where they need to and then the body will be returned to me after that whole process is done question from paul matthews do morticians normally just drain the blood down the sink the short answer is yes all of our bodily wastes are disposed just like our normal bodily wastes the sewer system that goes right to the water treatment plant this is a question from soggy emma why are coffins so expensive y'all just bury me raw well soggy emma that is uh definitely an option you can be buried in the ground without a casket a lot of funeral homes put substantial markups on their casket and i think it's just a way to collect money on on the tail end of a service but just like a furniture store which would maybe mark up their kitchen tables four times what they actually cost i would guess that most caskets are marked up probably one and a half to two times what the wholesale cost is this is a question from tiny rain do morticians put a bra on you if so i would like my rotting corpse to not wear a bra and would like my ghost to be wandering braless with poking nips well tiny rain i don't know if there's much i can do about poking nips but we do put bras on if the family requests and the reality is i've probably put on more bras than i have taken off in my life that answer your question this is a question from leonard de montague does a mortician feel just as sad as a normal person when someone close to them dies the short answer of that is yes that was one of the things actually i myself really worried about when i got into this profession because at a certain point when you see a dead body you almost always kind of go into work mode what can i do to help this family what can i do to prepare this body so i was very concerned when i started doing this that maybe i would start to even think of my own loved ones as something to help or something to fix and not really take in grief like i used to for my own family for loved ones my own grandpa passed away just a few months ago and i feel just as sad about that as i i think i ever would it's just a matter of of perspective and maybe where you're at at the moment question from t what foundation do funeral directors use to make dead people look alive well that's a good question all the makeup we use is actually formulated for dead people so it's made to go on cold skin as opposed to warm skin like regular makeup and one of the things we we try to do is not cake people with makeup but just do kind of light layers so that way their actual skin tone does shine through a little bit if you've ever gone to a funeral and maybe you've seen someone in the casket who is caked with makeup they don't really look like themselves so one of our goals is to tone that down a little bit so they do question from lala approximately how much does a mortician make the minimum and the maximum i really couldn't say what the minimum and maximum are the average i've read in the country is about 65 000 a year and talking to my other friends and colleagues that seems to be about the average for my area as well opia dana can you get half your body cremated and the other half buried do morticians do that asking for a friend i have never done that and i've never had anybody ask i guess i could see it happening if you really wanted to you would have to have a disposition permit that would have cremation and burial and i guess we'd probably have to sign a waiver to uh cut someone in half but maybe the bigger question would be what half are you gonna cremate and what half do you bury this is a question from that doodle bunny how do morticians handle their jobs without becoming emotional wrecks that is a good question most morticians i know are pretty normal people there are times where it's emotional so you do feel it and there are maybe days you come home where you just feel done and you don't want to work or maybe do what you're doing anymore but i think the fact that you can actually help people on on my side of the desk on this side of things there are things that you can do that maybe nobody else can do you can provide a chance for a mother to see her son one more time it's those kind of things that keep you going in those hard times this question is from not waving how do you dress the deceased i have theories well i would love to hear what your theories are but really it's fairly simple you're just gonna work their arms through just like you dress a baby maybe oftentimes if we have someone maybe very large that we can't move very well or maybe someone who has outgrown their clothes or maybe their clothes are too big will often time make cuts down the back and simply drape it over the front and tuck it under the back maybe sew it in a couple places so that way it sits right on the person and doesn't look like a like an over large tent or squeeze them into their clothes like a sausage this is a question from trap jason why don't we bury people vertically instead of horizontally they are already dead so why does it matter we could save so much space that is a great question i think a lot of it has to do with practicality so if you were to bury someone vertically you'd have to dig pretty deep hole and it would have to be pretty narrow you can imagine how tough it would be for let's say six people to carry a casket to the graveside and then turn it up on its end and drop grandma down the hole you might need a like a seat belt of some kind question from crowbar jones what does a mortician do if are artificial nails on a corpse keep them take them off asking for a friend i hope you don't mean keep them by keeping a collection but if you mean keeping them on um more often than not i will typically the artificial nails look nice clean and of course your nails underneath are pretty rough if they have them on i usually keep them other things that people might be concerned about removing piercings they almost always stay if it's an ear piercing and they have their earrings in maybe we'll take the earrings out clean them up a little bit other body piercings i always leave them in this is a question from melody jackson do morticians take makeup classes when getting their certifications yes we do i have a four year degree and at my college we took courses on what they call restorative art so this would include things like makeup and coloring but it would also include things like putting people back together after accidents sculpting an ear if someone has lost an ear lip boy do morticians also give haircuts anyone no one that can do a nice fade yeah lip boy i do give haircuts every so often usually only to men and usually only if it's something minor if someone does need to get their hair done we'll actually usually call a hairdresser in it's fairly simple because really you're only working with the front and the sides of the head this is a question from veronica say a body gets exhumed after two years what should be the state of the body to be expected to be that's one of the interesting things about my job is that i never actually know what happens after burial if we had an exclamation um you actually have to have a court order to open the vault and open the casket i've heard of cases where they've opened the casket and the body looks more or less unchanged and this was maybe 50 years after the fact this is a question from jonathan cowep monty pythons always look on the bright side of life as the nation's number one funeral song what's the oddest funeral music you've ever heard i haven't heard too many strange funeral songs myself but i do have this dream i have a friend and i told him if he passes away before i do i'd really like to sing on eagles wings but like the swedish chef from the muppets it would sound like this you he'd really initiative [Music] relief [Laughter] and that's it that's all your questions i sure enjoyed answering them and i hope you learned something

Channel: WIRED

Views: 9,750,788

Rating: 4.9598513 out of 5

Keywords: burial, cadaver, cadaver support, dead body, dead body support, dying, funeral, funeral director, funeral support, funerals, funerals mortician, funerals wired, mortician, mortician support, mortician tech support, mortician tech support wired, mortician wired, tech support cadaver, tech support dead bodies, tech support mortician, tech support wired, undertaker, undertaker support, what happens to dead body, wired, wired funerals, wired tech support

Id: W4ktLen9cVM

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/RuchW]

Note: Perhaps not everyone can enjoy this while they're eating a meal, but I thought the video was very informative.

[u/PM_UR_CLOUD_PICS]

As a very straight man, he's distractingly cute.

[u/lil-stawberry]

very charismatic guy :) it's a shame there isn't more of him on the internet

[u/davebandit]

Loved this. I am a HUGE fan of Caitlin Doughty and she has a great “Ask a mortician” series on YouTube as well. I highly suggest looking her up if you enjoyed this. Also, read her books.

[u/pulp1]

The HBO show 6 Feet Under was also a great look into the life of morticians and business of funeral homes

[u/isseidoki]

How is this meal time appropriate.. yum! Corpses!