A quiet evening in on Christmas Eve-Eve seemed like a good time to post a short update and wish you all a very merry festive season and all the best for 2018 as I am not sure how or when I will be able to post again.
The mortuary got busier of course and so much happened in the past week I can’t even think where to start. I have been cracking on with everything considering having a fairly horrid cold including a nasty cough and regular nose bleeds. Trying to be social while feeling like death warmed up is never fun but I’ve tried very hard!
I feel very privileged to be included in a team that has received many gifts and cards from all the funeral directors we see each day. I have never seen so many boxes of biscuits outside of a supermarket and luckily had two bottles of red wine to bring home (one of which I am sampling while writing this article).
One aspect of the week I found particularly fascinating and wanted to mention was a case of a patient who had a prosthetic nose. I had never seen such a thing before and found it completely intriguing so (of course) I researched them and found some articles I’d like to share. Some forms of cancer can cause loss of the nose and there is the possibility of having a prosthetic nose made, even 3D printed, and then attached using a magnet system built into your nasal area. I found two news articles where people had come forward with such noses, one in the Mirror and one in the Daily Mail. Isn’t technology wonderful! I’ve found cases where people have had ears attached in the same way and even whole parts of their face. I think this is incredible.
December 17th 2017: The Sunday Times
Another thing I noticed this week was that Alkaline Hydrolysis (see my previous discussion) reared it’s head in the news again. I saw a lot of talk on Twitter and my Dad passed me the above article from The Times with a fairly distasteful headline where it was talked about. Generally I am getting the impression that the public was not in favour because moving forward with such a thing would mean the human remains in the water of the process would be flushed away in the normal waste process of water. I have particularly strong feelings about this.
@ChickAndTheDead and @VonSvs discuss Alkaline Hydrolysis on Twitter
As you can see from this snapshot of Twitter, it has been pointed out that the process of post mortem actually washes an amount of human products away into the same system. I’m also not sure how different it is for the smoke of cremation to be pumped into the air compared to certain fluids being pumped into the water system, other than the fact we have a lot of hygienic and sanitary processes in place in our water system unlike the air that we breathe. If anyone has any thoughts on this I would be very interested to hear them.
I will now leave you with that thought, and once again wish you a Merry Christmas and will hopefully update you again soon. We spent a lot of time making enough fridge capacity space (hopefully) for the festive four day weekend but this does mean I will most likely be having a very busy day on Wednesday when I go back! Oh and please take a minute to think of those who work in the NHS or are on call over the four days. These people do not get thanked enough!
Take care and enjoy yourselves,
MG x
Mortuary Gem 
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