A patient of mine died at the hospital. Some other nursing students and myself cared for the body after his passing. It was one of the more…unreal moments of my life. He looked a little like a too life like model, and if I stared for too long, I felt faint.
Don’t think I’ll forget that for a while.
Ex-EMT checking in…
This is gonna sound a little crass but…get used to it. Working in a medical feild, especially emergency or other high acuity specialties of any kind…you will be far more likely to see dead people than the rest of the world.
Yeah, I know. Trust me, I was composed and professional the entire time - but it was weird. Weirder than I expected it to be. So I thought I’d share.
Out of curiosity, how long does it take to get used to it?
I watched my dad pass away a few years ago. It wasn’t weird for me at all. Definitely sad and surreal, considering how fast it all happened, but nothing that creeped me out. Maybe the brief time I spent a few years previously in a cadaver lab handling bodies and body parts helped, I don’t know. I stared at him in his casket for a long time but I can’t say that image has haunted me. I knew he wasn’t really in there anymore and I didn’t have an emotional reaction to his body.
I think it would be harder for me to see the body of a person who had died as a result of violence, not merely “natural causes” or an accident. Haven’t seen one yet, but as a (hopefully) future medical student, I’m sure I will.
When I was a criminology student the police came to the school and presented a slide show of homicide scenes. It was really disturbing to know that someone was capable of doing something so awful to another person. The bodies didn’t disturb me, the stories behind them did.
Wait till you see your first ripe one. Good times.
Ah, I remember my first (and so far only). Call me morbid but I was more transfixed than anything. It was an auto accident victim in the back seat of a vehicle. I didn’t see it close-up so I couldn’t make out the facial features that well, but what I did see was that the head had been mostly severed and when a female relative got in the back seat sobbing and grabbed the body, the head toppled over like a falling rock (partially, remaining attached).
It didn’t affect me that much but it definitely affected the friends I was with. One got sick and had to lie down. When we got back on the road nobody spoke a word for at least an hour. That was probably the weirder part for me.
The last couple of years of undergrad I worked at a funeral home in the evenings. You’d show friends and relatives to the room, close the caskets at night and open 'em up again in the morning. I didn’t have any familiarity with it beforehand but it became pretty routine and non-creepy in no time at all. For me the key was real simple, just maintaining respect.
Thanks for doing what you do. Not everyone can pull it off and I’m under no illusion that working with the “recently departed”, especially accident victims, wouldn’t be infinitely more trying.
My mom is a hospital secretary who recently had to help with some clerical work in autopsy. She walked in and there was a guy open on the table with people slicing away. She said she found it interesting and wanted to ask questions and whatnot, but forced herself to be nonchalant. I think I’d find it fascinating as well.
I’ve worked with hundreds of dead bodies if you count skeletals remains. Needless to say, they were much easier to depersonalize than more recently deceased bodies and I had never had a relationship with any of them before they died. I never got enough experience to get used to those who’d died violent deaths, especially drowning victims. Not to sound too crass, but in physical anthropology we had a saying: The deader the better.
Back in the day I did some electrical work in the lab where the mortician of a local funeral home did his thing. The main switch gear was in that room so it was difficult to work around his schedule. I saw more than I cared to at the time. Entire embalming processes and such. The hardest to see were the little ones. Got used to it after a couple days and none of the images are etched in the brain, really. Tried not to look, but you can’t help it.
I’ve also seen the crumpled body of a man that jumped off an 80 foot bridge and landed on the ground. I think he was aiming for the water and missed. He was still breathing (very labored and noisy) for a short time and it was obvious he wasn’t going to make it. That was a tough one to see because the body was so unnaturally presented that it almost made you sick to look at him. He died within minutes. Poor guy…
One of the good things about med surge nursing is that our contact with the body tends to be over once they head on down to the morgue, so I doubt I’ll be seeing many ‘ripe’ ones in my practice. Since I’m most likely going into pediatrics, I’m more worried about seeing my first dead child.
One of the *bad *things about med surge nursing is the relaxation of the body’s sphincters immediately following death. I can’t say it’s worse to clean up death incontinence than live incontinence, but it’s definitely more sureal in it’s grossness.
Thanks.
I will always remember the only person I saw die before my eyes. It was also an auto accident and I didn’t know him, but it was an eye opening experience. Sad, but fascinating too.
I didn’t know about the pooing thing. He certainly didn’t poo. I guess he must’ve gone before he got in the car.
I’m a peds nurse, so I’ve had some experience with children and babies who have died/are dying. It definitely affects me, but I always try to act professional about it and save my tears for later, for the benefit of the patient’s family. Sometimes it’s impossible to stop myself from crying, like when I’ve taken care of the patient for awhile and developed a relationship of sorts with the family. The first (and only, so far) patient funeral I went to was for a baby girl. I had the chance to take care of her a lot and had become really attached to her and her family. Seeing her in her little casket was awful. I’m glad I went to the funeral, though, because her family really seemed to appreciate having people from the hospital there. I hung around in the back of the funeral home at first, but her family invited me to sit up front with them during the service. I sat next to her mother and held her hand and cried along with her.
Being a peds nurse is definitely hard at times, but it can be so so rewarding as well. Good luck with the rest of your school!
The dead guy with the steering wheel implanted in his chest was somewhat disturbing. The screaming of the wife and kids that had just had their husband/father senselessly taken from them- more disturbing.
The only time I’ve seen someone dead is when they were laying out, nicely presented, in a casket.
In college, I had a one-day job delivering flowers. One large bouquet had to go to a funeral home. I got there and an attendant directed me to a certain room - “Just place it with the rest,” he said. I found the room, and sure enough, one end of it was literally a mass of bouquets and arrangments. I pushed two arrangements apart to make room for mine, wnet to set my burden down, and –
Almost placed it on Grandma’s face. The entire coffin was completely surmounted by flowers, so much so that the casket wasn’t visible. That was the first time I saw a body, and it freaked me out a little bit. I dealt with it a little better when I was at my father-in-law’s side when he passed away.
My father discovered a body when he was younger. No-one had seen the elderly next-door neighbor for a while, so Pop went over. Came in the back door and noticed the cellar door was open. Stood at the top of the stairs and the smell hit him. He swooned and fell down the cellar stairs; fetched up against the neighbor’s body. She had been there, next to the furnace, for several days.
Dad was NOT happy.
Me too - which is its own brand of creepy. I think a dead person who had passed away in a hospital would be much less disturbing than the made-up kind.
I’ve seen several dead bodies. Not even sure when the first time was, anymore. Mostly people who succumbed to age and its ills. Like when I worked at the clinic an old man leaning up against the wall asleep turned out to not be asleep but deceased instead. A friend’s grandmother (I went with her to the hospital to lend support). Funerals (yes, made-up corpses can be even creepier than the freshly dead).
Most recently, I sat by my mom and held her hand as she passed away. Nothing dramatic in that case.
Dead bodies don’t bother me much. Live people suffering, THAT bothers me, but the dead don’t suffer. If there’s some horrific injury to remind me of a violent death that bothers me, but it’s the manner of death, not the fact that the person is now dead. It’s sad and upsetting for the family and friends, but the body itself… nope, not really too bad for me. Can’t say I really enjoy being around them, but it doesn’t affect me like it does some others, never has.
So, how long it takes to get used to it – I’d say that varies from person to person.
As a florist, I see bodies on a regular basis. The ages range from stillborn infants to the elderly. It took a year or so of seeing them to stop being creeped out. At this point, I’m only bothered by a strangers’ body if it has a strong smell. Every now and then (especially in the summer) there’s one with an odor that no amount of incense or flowers can cover. The babies are easiest for me because they usually look like dolls. Unfortunately, children are more likely to have screaming, crying relatives nearby. I completely agree with Broomstick; the suffering of living people is hard to stomach.
I’m an RN and have seen many dead bodies. Honestly, the nicely presented ones laid out for funerals squick me out more than anything. There’s something so unnatural and disturbing about that ritual to me.