A month ago...

A month ago, this person died.   They had been kept in the refrigeration system at the hospital but when collected by the funeral home last week, were very hard.  Not frozen, there is a difference both to the eye and touch, and biologically.

So, after three days being left in the natural air, I went in today to make the deceased ready for viewing this afternoon.   Actually, as I write this funnily enough.

Rather annoyingly, there was stomach purge all over the right side of the face where their head had been left slightly on their side in the hospital mortuary fridge.  These stomach contents included 'coffee grounds' Coffee-ground emesis is vomiting of dark brown, granular material that resembles coffee grounds. It results from upper GI bleeding that has slowed or stopped, with conversion of red Hb to brown hematin by gastric acid.   This naturally decomposed and took the side of the face too.  The results were skin slip and green discolouration.  

In addition, there was a great deal of faecal matter to clean up and treatment of the resulting areas of decomp due to that. 

Once cleaned, with hair washed and dried, embalming and cosmetology completed, viewing will be possible today.  The lack of enough time between treatment and viewing means that they will have to present with the face slightly turned, but some cosmetology covered most of the marks.  If I had had a day or two, the skin slip could have been dried out and full cosmetic treatment would have been applied and successful.

The other deceased I had to do was simple in comparison.