r/AskReddit People who work with dead bodies Reveal the darkest secrets!

people who work with dead bodies what's something we really don't wanted to know about what you do we may have our eyes closed when we die but they don't stay that way the first time I realized this was around 3 a.m. and I had to check something in the morgue I looked in this dead dudes eyes were looking in my direction scared the ducking [ __ ] out of me also their mouth might open like they was at the dentist my uncle used to tell me the story of a friend he had that worked in a morgue he used to dress the bodies before viewings and there was this one time he was trying to put a coat on this man so he sat the man up and leaned him over his shoulder while wrapping the coat around him essentially in a hugging position and I guess the way the body was leaning let out an air pocket he still had in his lungs and the body let out a slight exhale sounding like he was breathing in his ear apparently he quit his job shortly after back when I did human anatomy 101 102 at uni we dealt with dead bodies and organs Australia they keep the nail polish on you that you were wearing when you died so make sure your nails look fine before you pass and you donate your body to science the supervisor told us that it helped keep the humanity about the person to remind us that we should be respectful and this person consented to have their body touched and used in such a way it's not the worst thing but I hadn't considered that and I'm genuinely thinking about adding do my nails before donating me into my will I work with what I like to call the super dead they're all skeletons my normal meter is a bit off and people react to skeletal-remains differently so let me know if this doesn't belong teeth fall out a lot but that's actually really helpful when learning to IID teeth you take a guess and see if they fit in the proper socket if they don't you have more studying to do the specimens are all kept in plastic bags placed in cardboard boxes each individual has their own box we have favorites some are more complete than others so it's easier to study the various structures some are stinkier than others due to improper cleaning of the remains dried tissue isn't terribly funky but it's not exactly Pleasant a lot of the skulls have bits of Earth and roots in them since there are archaeological material it's pretty cool to see how the roots go through the various foramen where nerves and veins once were I find it's a very surreal experience to work with skeletal remains you can pick up an entire individual with no problem you can hold a skull and you're holding what used to be the most identifiable part of a person skull seems small but then you remember that they once protected a brain the very thing that made that person a person thoughts feelings memories were all encased by this oblong structure that now only holds a few roots I worked mostly with live animals but a side effect of live animals is that sometimes they die I can guarantee any zoo slash Park slash Wildlife Center you've ever been to has at least one freezer full of dead animals behind the scenes we have for often we put animals in there with no real idea of what we're going to use them for yet but is it just in case some get used for research some get taxa demate we use a lot of taxidermy zazz educational resources so students can observe and handle an animal without hurting or stressing a live one all of our animals are wild so we don't do any live handling into taxidermy as a good way around this eventually the taxidermy 's wear out they may loose their fur or feathers bits may break off at cetera we repair as many as we can but eventually they're too far gone in Australia legislation states taxidermy must be destroyed by combustion do you know what's sadder than chucking 15 penguins on a bonfire chucking 15 naked and broken penguins on a bonfire this is obviously going to be pretty morbid for some people to read so please read with caution one of the hardest things I've come across working crime and trauma scene cleanup is that there is a very upsetting amount of people that commit suicide thinking it's going to spare their families the grief of having to see them it's one of the hardest parts of my job knowing that this person tried their best to spare their families the trauma of seeing them this is obviously the last thing this person wanted almost every suicide I've cleaned that happened in a remote or different area the family had to come in and see the body beforehand to identify it sometimes without the actual face intact gunshot wounds are some of the worst ones to deal with because your family isn't going to be able to properly mourn you if the person chose to commit suicide in a hotel room or somewhere else by the time someone finds their body is typically heavily decomposed or decomposing depending on where you died or what you died on such as wood carpet or a lot of tiling anything porous your body is going to decompose and body fat and blood are going to essentially melt into the flooring and the people cleaning that up are going to have to remove the flooring to properly make it not a biohazard this means the cleaning fees usually get thrown on your family and this can cost them thousands sometimes more so not only our families typically traumatized by the loss of their loved d1 but they're usually dealing with massive cleaning fees or debt on top of their morning if your family can't afford to have your body cleaned up sometimes they're going to have to clean up the aftermath and this can actually cause an extreme health hazard risk I had to clean up my grandfather's suicide and I can tell you that it follows you forever besides medically assisted suicides that allow the family to properly mourn there is no such thing as a clean suicide I worked with dead bodies in a non traditional sense as a first semester medical student day one they are clean slates it felt like I was in a movie scene filmed in a morgue or something by the end of the semester the bodies were missing parts and completely unrecognizable in less than six months we sawed off a whole leg hand side the skullcap off and saw the face in half down the middle partially decapitated the body to see in between the spinal column and pharynx cut out the intestines cut open the stomach d glove to hand on the penis sliced a penis in half remove the layers of skin from the testicle and then pulled it up and out of the body those are the most shocking things in my opinion typing it out feels weird it was a gradual work up to cutting the face but even by the end of the semester I would conveniently find a way to sit to the side day when I could barely handle cutting the first flap of skin I tried to give objective descriptions because I don't want there to be a perceived tone of humor or disgust the meaning of their gift was emphasized from the beginning and we always treated the bodies with respect covered everything except where we were working kept the face wrapped in the lab clean I guess as much as we could given the circumstances I am grateful for the generous donors who gave their bodies for medical education they provided us with the valuable learning opportunity without them I would never understand the age boom on body literally inside and out I used to work in a medical school as an admissions officer before I had my kids the school was very proud of its dissection room it was a huge hangar like place just filled with bodies that had been donated to medical science it's odd to me to think most medical schools in the UK don't have them anymore I used to give tours of the place and honestly nothing bad happened most people were respectful some morbidly curious there were stories of students stealing body parts to scare housemates but I believe they were urban legend I've seen bodies dissected in ways that I thought alarming all of them had their heads removed for the Dental / maxillofacial surgery students so I've stood at the neck hole end of many a specimen while the director of the room gave talks I also had a parent of one perspective student faint on me luckily I caught their head so it didn't smash on the floor but that didn't stop them trying to take us to court one day I was alone in there and I was daydreaming but realized I was just starting at the soles of a cadavers feet I thought about first and last steps how those feet had been applauded when they first walked in who mourned when they stopped by unexpectedly burst into tears I spoke to some students after and told them they had all had the same type of experience one student told me about a cadaver of a young girl that was still wearing her sparkly nail varnish it caused her to cry uncontrollably they then said they had the Oppo opportunity to meet the family of a man who donated his body they told a family they'd all come to same decision they'd do the same when they died that brought a lot of comfort to them working with the dead is very strange it makes you think about life a lot more don't work with dead people but have a friend who does to prep the body for a funeral they shove a corkscrew plastic butt plug in the deceased to stop any nasty stuff coming out yet another reason I don't want to viewing just burn me and get it over with I'm donating my body to science when I die that way my body can be useful then I can be turned to dust and reintegrated in for the world worked in aged care many years ago death is a process that can drag on unfortunately when people eventually passed we had to clean the bodies not just poop etc but a full body wash teeth and comb hair it's quite weird to move a dead body around entomologist who works with forensic teams it's my job to discern which insects are consuming and decomposing cadaver and how they colonized a body through fastidious examinations of instars and population density to determine the time of death or any post-mortem movements of the cadaver the most predominant insects to devour human remains or Diptera or flies which arrive minutes after death blow flies and flesh flies house flies will not attempt to colonize the cadaver until later decomposition stages usually when bloating occurs the first stage of decomposition is the fresh stage the chemicals from cellular breakdown are undetectable to humans but immediate decay is what attracts insects enticing them to a new environment to breed however no eggs are typically laid during this process once bloating is observed things progress more grotesquely the bloating stage is named for the inflation of the abdominal area it resembles an expanding balloon which is contingent on the amount of an aerobic bacteria present and how much gas is produced it's also the stage most adult flies are attracted to the cadaver eggs are late and larvae begin to superficially devour flesh predators of these larvae are attracted to use the cadaver as a hunting ground as you can envision hundreds of voracious little mouths penetrate the abdomen and instinctively search for more succulent meat by the decay stage the decay odors are particularly pungent and if you've ever had the Mies fortune of observing insects consume a body you'll require strong fortitude the next stage is post decay bones remnants of the cadavers hair perforated organs and bawd bond is a viscous substance of decay which subsequently emanates an alluring fragrance for arthropods to intrusively investigated the carcass they hunt any lingering larvae who remained from the decay stage and haven't left to pupate the last stage is the remains stage the population of insects begins to diminish as the drying of a carcass isn't a conducive environment for breeding or hunting very little cartridge will remain a the vestiges of skin begin to crack and disintegrate I especially derive gratification when I'm exhorted to use my toxicological skills and macerate some of the specimens to deduct whether drugs were present in the corpse at the time of death cocaine can precipitate the growth of larvae whilst some poisons can impede colonization unfortunately the deceased person is usually in the extreme stages of decay whenever I've had the opportunity and it's precisely this reason I'm required as the body is usually devoured to the extent that any toxicological substances cannot be extracted this is just a rudimentary summarizing of the processes it can be quite convoluted at any extraneous factors accelerate or delay decay climate is a common culprit for advancing decay still I thought it would be interesting for people to read I don't but I heard a story from an undertaker who warned that body sometimes moan from gas escaping through a corpses mouth he once saw it happen while a woman and her husband were looking at her father's body in her hysterics she thought her father was somehow live and yelled for her husband to try to give the corpse mouth-to-mouth the Undertaker had to pull him off the body both of them were freaking out and then she broke down all over again and the husband was none too pleased that he'd had his mouth on his dead Phil's ask a mortician on YouTube actually has a lot of really informative and entertaining content for this kind of stuff Hollywood can prepare you for a lot of the visuals and even some of the sounds of death / the morgue but they can't prepare you for the smells even recently deceased people have pretty bad odors coming from the abdominal cavity not only do you have the feces in the large intestine but you have food in varying degrees of digestion from the stomach through the small intestine some of that is recognizable in appearance and the worst is sort of recognizable by smell I've done about 2,250 autopsies and the only time I puked it was when somebody's gastric contents still looked and smelled like warm food and I was hungover that's probably the key detail like into it / Eskimos have many words for varying types of snow we have many varying types of foul odors everybody's : smells like [ __ ] feet and armpits that haven't been washed in months have a bad smell and flaking skin infected bodies with sepsis / pneumoniae / urinary tract infections have a unique smell people who are drunk can smell like alcohol or even sweet decomposition also yields a variety of fowl honest early dry deacons are at the lower end of the spectrum whereas a body that's been in a river for a few weeks during the summer will be at the worst end plus there are jumping maggots called cheese skippers accompanying these cases there are certain foods / smells I can't tolerate outside of the morgue because they remind me of the smell and feel of sloughing green black skin of decomposing bodies last and perhaps grossest our bodies of people who died in house fires the good news is that almost all of them die from CO smoke inhalation before their bodies burned so there's no real pain for them the bad news is there's frequently a lot of charring and loss of recognizable features the ugly / gross news is that they smell like a barbecue and their rib cages look and smell just like smoked ribs you get at a restaurant your mouth waters and your stomach growls even as you're trying to determine if this person died as a result of the fire or died before the fire for example homicide covered up by arson or heart attack causing them to drop a cigarette into the couch causing the fire for you I really do like my job but most people tend not to want to know anything about it I'm a nurse at nursing care home and I took care of dead bodies quite often I had only one really bad experience our patient died and when we needed to wash his body and put a nice clothes on we noticed black nasty-looking fluid pouring out of his mouth and nose so we needed to hold his mouth and nose covered with cloths while we were turning and moving his body it was huge amount of fluid there was not any rare smell or something although I didn't want to smell it properly I asked doctor what it was and it was necrotic lungs tissue water which caused the dead patient denied to be taken to hospital when he started having issues sorry for grammar I don't mind to take care of dead bodies it is part of my job which I love to do but damn I felt so sorry for this man when I do my job I'm trying to make everything with dignity but sometimes it is really hard edit words not really an answer to the question but relevant all the same I work on trains maintenance so naturally every few weeks we have a train come in that has hit some poor soul now it gets cleaned before us engineers see it but we have to Commission the train to go back out again which involves checking the under frame for anything that got missed one time there was a finger lodged in the brake disk I have other gross stories too but that one shook me thanks for listening to another episode of red attacks subscribe and activate the notification bell so you won't miss any stories feel free to share your own stories below in the comments have a good day

Channel: Reddit X

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Keywords: reddit stories, r/askreddit, reddit, top posts, reddit scary stories, reddit top posts, r/askreddit questions, Reddit X, reddit all, eipc reddit, epic posts, epic stories, reddit posts 2019, reddit top posts 2019, ask reddit nsfw, r/ask reddit, reddit ask, top comments, reddit compilation, dark reddit, askreddit, dead bodies

Id: kRl06U_BT3s

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019