Embalming - soul leaving the body

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I’ve pronounced time of death a few times. Usually, there is no doubt. The people I see aren’t coming back and are in terrible shape and will never recover. I’ve seen some fall asleep and linger for over a week. Their extremities turn blue and cold. Their breaths become few and far between. The ‘death rattle’ is real. When we take them off all supplemental oxygen- especially if they are oxygen dependent- they tend to pass pretty quickly after that. We tend to give ativan and morphine if they seem uncomfortable. These people are usually palliative.

If someone’s code status is ‘full code’ and they are non-responsive we ‘code’ them. At this stage, they can’t get less dead, so we perform CPR and try to get them back. Some can be saved, many can not. Some codes last close to an hour. Some people are brought back and then are coded again a few times after. It’s a brutal way to go- and if you survive the process- you’ll be in a precarious position and have to deal with broken ribs on top of whatever else was already wrong with you.

Once someone passes- we pronounce time of death (in the US a physician or two nurses can do it), have family sign to release the body to the funeral home or crematorium of their choosing, inform the Coroner, call the organ donation agency, inform all physicians that had been following the patient, remove all lines, drains, clean up the deceased, tag and place the deceased in a body bag, and then discharge the deceased to the hospital morgue.

In the US, embalming is not required unless the deceased is being transported over state lines. Situations such as the one you cite are extremely rare.
 
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There continues to be people who come to life in the morgue.

There is a disorder where a person is paralyzed, unable to move or speak, breathing undetectable, pulse undetectable although the person remains fully conscious.

They tell of being declared dead and being transported to the morgue. One even tells of finally being able to move and asking for a glass of water.

I can imagine how scary that would be.

I saw this on a show on the Learning Channel back in the mid-2000s.
 
Most people do not qualify to be organ donors anyway, even if they signed up to be. The organ donation agency always comes when someone dies (regardless of whether or not a patient signed up before death) and most only qualify for tissue donation.
 
Irishmom2 said:
Odilon:
If the body is no longer breathing and there is no pulse, the soul has left the body.
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Again, he might have been willing to “go out on a limb” to provide solace, especially for Mrs Kennedy. Or he may just have had a hunch, or it may have been wishful thinking.

Using the criterion of brain death for the President, he was most certainly dead, as he had essentially no working brain left.
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Not embalming sounds great, sounds green. But it might not be as great as you think. In our state, if a body is not embalmed it must be in the ground, cremated, or frozen within 24 hours. So if you have family coming out of town, you have to spend the money to ship the body to a funeral home that has freezers (most don’t) and then of course pay for the freezing. All of which takes up energy. Quite a bit of energy is expended in burning a body also.
 
In the manner of (but completely different from) private revelations, what you address is permitted - not mandated, not binding upon the faithful.

Power over life and death is not ours - not the funeral director’s, not even the doctor’s. God will raise back to this life those whom He wills. Witness Fr. Benedict Groeschel† who after being struck by a car, had no vital signs for something like 40+ minutes.

Best not to over-think things, as it risks setting a pattern of thought which can entice doubt.
 
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po18guy said:
Best not to over-think things, as it risks setting a pattern of thought which can entice doubt.
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I’m not sure I follow your reasoning here. Great thinkers such as Aristotle, Aquinas, Einstein — I could go on — certainly did “over-think” things, picked them to pieces, you might say. That’s how we learn — break things down, look at them from different perspectives, examine all angles, give credence to multiple sides of an argument in a search for truth, “think outside the box”. The Summa Theologica is all about this form of reasoning.
 
Cirdan_XII said:
I do know that in certain places (such as Poland, where by the way they typically do not embalm), the presumed deceased were placed in a special room, where they lay for a period of days, again, to be absolutely sure they were dead. I do not know if they do this anymore, but they once did. When putrefaction sets in, then you can know with certainty that the person is dead and that, indeed, the soul has left the body. But I realize it is more difficult to embalm at that point.
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I hope they have some way to keep the bodies cool, then. Air conditioning is not common in Poland. Thankfully most buildings have thick stone or masonry walls, which keeps the interior of a house fairly tolerable even in the hottest months, especially if you have a fan going to circulate the air as well as open or cracked windows. (They don’t do screens, you won’t find those generally in Europe. Bugs and pests just fly in and out at their pleasure. I have had some fearsome big mosquitoes fly in before!)

They build things to last over there.
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A doctor confirming death will presumably look at ALL relevant bodily functions - brain activity, heartbeat, breathing, responsiveness to painful stimuli and so on.

If none are present for a sufficient period of time, and signs of death such as rigor mortis are observable, then everything humanly possible will have been done to be certain that death has taken place. These days doctors do not, and need not, wait for putrefaction to occur. They can be confident using other measures and observations.

Since God does not expect superhuman knowledge of us, He will, we can surmise, be perfectly OK if we proceed.to embalm/harvest organs/etc once we are as ceetain as we can be that some one is dead.
 
The great philosophers were trailblazing. We have the settled deposit of faith. Huge difference. To scrutinize what the Church has decided is counter-productive for a Catholic. To scrutinize what the Church permits strikes me as purely academic.

Mileage varies, as usual.
 
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CoffeeFanatic said:
I’ve pronounced time of death a few times. Usually, there is no doubt. The people I see aren’t coming back and are in terrible shape and will never recover. I’ve seen some fall asleep and linger for over a week. Their extremities turn blue and cold. Their breaths become few and far between. The ‘death rattle’ is real. When we take them off all supplemental oxygen- especially if they are oxygen dependent- they tend to pass pretty quickly after that. We tend to give ativan and morphine if they seem uncomfortable. These people are usually palliative.

If someone’s code status is ‘full code’ and they are non-responsive we ‘code’ them. At this stage, they can’t get less dead, so we perform CPR and try to get them back. Some can be saved, many can not. Some codes last close to an hour. Some people are brought back and then are coded again a few times after. It’s a brutal way to go- and if you survive the process- you’ll be in a precarious position and have to deal with broken ribs on top of whatever else was already wrong with you.

Once someone passes- we pronounce time of death (in the US a physician or two nurses can do it), have family sign to release the body to the funeral home or crematorium of their choosing, inform the Coroner, call the organ donation agency, inform all physicians that had been following the patient, remove all lines, drains, clean up the deceased, tag and place the deceased in a body bag, and then discharge the deceased to the hospital morgue.
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I sat with my mother for the last 3 weeks till she died. I saw her exhale her last breath. She was just shy of her 82nd birthday. I then notified the nurse who in turn checked my mother and then called the doctor. I rang all my siblings and greeted them upon their arrival, and we all gathered around to say our goodbyes. From memory, I think the drains and tubes etc were removed, the body cleaned, death verified by one or two doctors, was then taken down to the hospital morgue to wait for the funeral home to collect the body.
I’m grateful to God that our mother passed peacefully, and her struggles were over.
 
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To be honest I was once influenced by a Muslim who told me by embalming our bodies we attempt to preserve the body after death (which we do), a process similar to the mummification by the Egyptians. Jesus also said let the dead be dead so in light of this I have made preparations that I will not be embalmed.
 
This isn’t some interesting Polish custom, it’s a wake. That’s what a wake was originally for. Someone or someones sat with the body in case it showed signs of life.
 
Rudolph said:
To be honest I was once influenced by a Muslim who told me by embalming our bodies we attempt to preserve the body after death (which we do), a process similar to the mummification by the Egyptians. Jesus also said let the dead be dead so in light of this I have made preparations that I will not be embalmed.
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On this one thing, I think the Jews and Muslims are onto something. The Eastern Orthodox normally don’t embalm either.

I am not saying that I think it is sinful to embalm. But just my slant on it, I think it is closer to the ideal to have the unpreserved body return to the earth naturally.
 
CoffeeFanatic said:
If someone’s code status is ‘full code’ and they are non-responsive we ‘code’ them.
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I’m not sure if I’m understanding correctly. Maybe this is one aspect of current medical practice that I don’t quite get. When my sister’s husband was discharged from a cancer treatment center, it was not because he was cured. It was because they had done all they could. A few days later, he ended up in the ER. A young doctor came out and asked whether we wanted them to do everything possible or just palliative treatment. “Well, what’s his prognosis?” I asked. “Oh, he’s not going to make it,” the doc said, mentioning the numerous intractable incurable tumors. Now, his family were about to call for everything possible to be done, but that would have been pointless. He died two days later.

My point is, why ask the question, when the patient is dying? What’s the point of considering extraordinary measures for a patient who is not going to live?
Hospitals ask for advance directives. In effect they are asking a patient to make a medical decision with respect to something the has not occurred and for which the circumstances cannot be known, and for which the patient has no medical knowledge.
 
When my Mom died I was watching the monitor and when it flat lined I looked at her and knew right away she (her soul) was gone. The only thing left was her mortal remains, Mom was no longer in it. I really did not feel sadness, she was no longer in pain and her travails here on earth was over. Sure, it was sad she was no longer with us, but sadness for her? No.
 
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I wish I had a real answer for you. I’ve seen people that want to be a DNR/DNI (do not resuscitate/do not intubate) that suddenly have a family member gain POA (power of attorney) status over them and change their code status to ‘full code’. We can legally do nothing in that case.

Families are often in denial as to how bad it is for their loved ones. They don’t want to let go and their loved ones wind up suffering more at the end because of it. I had a patient recently whose code status changed three times in one day because a family member that was the POA couldn’t make up their mind. You can have doctors and nurses talk to them and try to present reality until they’re blue in the face, but a lot of families do not understand and don’t want to understand. Sometimes, it’s even due to unscrupulous family wanting to keep grandma and grandpa alive long enough to collect as many of their checks as possible.

Whatever one’s code status- it has nothing to do with receiving treatment. Someone can be a DNR/DNI and get full medical treatment up to the point of death. I’m all for full treatment for patients, trying to give them the best quality of life no matter their circumstances, however, when we all know they will never get better, it is stressful having a patient that is a full code.
 
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