I Wasn't Expecting a Dead Body

Pic from Dukelabs.com

I was debating which subject I wanted to blog about tonight. I had a few rough drafts sitting idly by while I read the latest news articles from Drudge, Google News, etc.

My Droid's battery was in the red so I decided to plug it in for a charge and head down to the Emergency Room for a bit. You know, cause I do all this blogging on my phone. I certainly wouldn't do it on a company computer. Anyway, along my path, I was paged overhead. Nothing unusual about that.

A quick shout out to the ER desk and I was informed my assistance was needed in Room One. Room One is our trauma room and most likely I was being summoned to help with chest compressions. A perk of being one of the few bigger guys on the night shift. There could be five EMT's standing around that just brought the patient to our hospital, but it's me and a bodybuilder from Respiratory that get to pump on chests.

Anyway, to my surprise, I wasn't needed for chest compressions at all. Nope. I was needed because three little female nurses were given the task of "boxing the big guy". Boxing as in put the obese dead patient into the cold box until the mortuary guys get here at 8am.

Now, I've known somebody had to do this job. People die in hospitals every day. Somebody has to secure the body in the morgue until the mortuary people come and get them. I just never thought I'd be the one to do it. It NEVER crossed my mind...at all.

So the bodybuilder and I are looking at each other. This body was over 400 pounds (that's where our scale stopped). Of course he had NO sheets underneath him to help move him around. The little nurses were reading the instructions, I kid you not, that came in a "kit". These instructions, as she explained to us, included rolling the patient on his side so that we could place a body bag under him. We also had to insert a large absorbant pad, almost the full length of the gurney.

We found two security guards and the four of us rolled this man on his side. I won't go into details about what was under or coming out of this body. I will say, however, that this was not in my job duties AND I had just eaten my share of pizza (one of our security guards was called to deploy in Kuwait so we had a little send off party).

Ours was like this but a little bigger...a little.

We finally got the body in the bag and he was so large that we couldn't zip it up. We covered him with a sheet so we could transport him down the hall to the box room. Then it got difficult.

Picture a full size refrigerator placed flat on the ground. Instead of a door in the traditional place, the small end (or top of the fridge) was the door. We had to get the big guy in lengthwise from a gurney into the cooler. Again, not in my skill set.

Long story short, what normally holds two bodies...could now only hold one. We had to take the middle "shelf" out to make more room. If there was a wrong way of placing a person in this thing, we surely did it. Several minutes later, profusely sweating, we closed it up and walked away.

The last thing I was expecting tonight was to see a dead body..let alone have to move it around, bag it up, and get it into a large ice box.

If you're looking for that one last little excuse to go on a diet because you are overweight, consider the healthcare workers that will have to put your big butt in an ice box after your demise. And they may have just had pizza. I almost had mine twice...

~OJD