I found myself yesterday having surrounded myself in death. I realised that I not only went to work at the mortuary as usual but also helped present a talk about end of life care, showed around a student nurse interested in our work, came home and listened to the Griefcast podcast, watched Disney’s Coco with my other half and prepared some Death Cafe materials.
Myself with the lovely Cariad Lloyd who hosts Griefcast, the award winning podcast available for download.
Death is pretty much my life now, and I really couldn’t be happier about it!
This isn’t the post I had planned over the weekend at all. I have been working on what turned into an epically long discussion of the harms of fat shaming in our culture. Every time we have a patient come in who is bariatric, or obese, or heavy, or fat, or whatever term you wish to use, I consider the harm in our society this reflects. Not the fact they have lived that way, but the damage and hurt caused to them by the nature of our fat shaming society. Especially after the recent news articles about mortuaries not being able to store the number of these patients they are receiving. I might still post it once I’ve tidied it up and edited it a bit. Let me know if it’s something you would find interesting and I’ll have a think about it!
Like I say above, I’ve spent Monday so far mainly talking to other people about my work. I assisted with some nurses training which I hope to one day present myself. We teach the nurses for an hour as part of their End of Life training, explaining to them about what the mortuary does and why. The most important part is how their job impacts what we do and what they can do to help us! I think the most discussed point of the sessions I have attended so far is that we ask for all lines and tubes to be left in the patient if they die. The reason for thing being it prevents any leaks or blood from coming out. It’s horrible to see a new patient in the morning who is soaked in blood because an IV line was taken out and not properly bandaged.
The nurse we have with us this week is here for four days. She’s lovely and been asking all the right questions. I really do love showing people my work, I find I can talk about it for as long as they will listen. It’s days like this I remember how lucky I am and how much I appreciate the opportunity I have to do what I do and learn what I learn.
Death Cafe in Upminster on Tuesday 17th July at 7pm at the Sweet Rose Cakery
Hope you all have a great week. Don’t forget that Death Cafe takes place a week today and if you can attend you are so very welcome! There’s tea, coffee, cake, snacks, wine, beer and death chats- what more could you want from a Tuesday evening?
MG x
Mortuary Gem 
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