The Ramblings of Guise Dugal

You can in part blame Amy and KB for this being posted, as they spurred me on when I wasn’t sure whether to post this or not, as I kind of felt this entry fell in to the category of “why the hell would anyone want to know that?!” or “and you don’t think writing about that is just a bit weird?!” posting.

The last few months have been a bit of a harsh ride for me, in fact the last twelve have been quite a hard slog. I’m not going to turn this blog into a “dear diary” as I fought hard against myself with that when I decided to take myself ‘seriously’ and move away from LiveJournal. Having said that, the effect of this blog entry is worth mentioning a few little trivia points about my real life.

Firstly, I work in a hospital. I’ve held quite a few jobs, from working a graveyard shift in a convenience store where I was once threatened with a cucumber to working in welfare fraud investigation where I was threatened with anything in arms reach (mostly by colleagues). In the hospital I’ve worked as a notes prepper (seeing things no man should ever EVER have to see) and as a helping hand to new doctors as they head in to the killing fields – probably a bad choice of words there. My dad used to work in the Emergency department of the same hospital, and the hospital it replaced.

Secondly, June for me sucks on a deeply personal level, and this entry deals with something I did in June.

Thirdly, it appears I will do anything for learning something new, no matter how it may affect me.

During June two things occurred within days of each other which could pretty much point to a sign that coincidence does not exist, as much as some overarching control. The first was in having to record a lecture on how to certify a death for people to watch as a training DVD, a lecture I have now had to sit through on no less than ten occassions while compiling it. The second was that within a day I was invited to tour the mortuary facilities of the hospital.

The second part may not surprise you, except if I tell you that this time my offer to be sent to the mortuary was indeed optional and not part of a thinly veiled threat by someone who most likely intended for me to be going in and out somewhat horizontal.

The tour happened on the day. The same day marked the thirteenth anniversary of my dad’s funeral and a week before my birthday. See what I mean about coincidence now?

It might seem weird to some people why anyone would want to tour the hospital mortuary, some may think it’s a ‘sick fascination’ or an ‘attempt to look goth/emo’, others may think it as depressing or scary. Nonetheless, I wasn’t alone in being interested, as the vast majority of the girls in my office also took the tour, and several staff before us had seen the facilities too. If anything I think some people feel comfort in knowing what will happen or having their beliefs or preconceptions put to rest, so to speak.

Four of us gathered in the morning. Myself, two female colleagues from my office and one female from somewhere else in the hospital, and we wandered off to the entrance of the mortuary. Already some may be picturing our small Scooby-esque crew heading to the bowels of the hospital, mayb into a basement amongst pipes and vents, or maybe to a dank corridor in the back of the shadowiest recess.

In fact, the most that could be used to describe where we enterred was ‘non-descript’. A simple pair of wooden doors in a normal corridor, no markings and no signs of skeletal figures with farming equipment loitering nearby. We were met by two of the mortuary workers, in fact it appears the only two, and I shall name them Jim and James. That isn’t their names, but I think it suits how normal they were.

Jim was the senior, he was the Techician and advised that this title switches so much it wasn’t really worth noting, James was his friendly Assistant, slightly metal-ish young man with tattoos and a sense of weekend rebel about him. The pair were cordial, friendly and chatty, no morose sense or gloominess hung in the air, it was simply a place where these two guys worked.

We were led down a sparse short corridor as Jim explained the role and function of the mortuary and their jobs, as well as settling a few nerves along the way. The offices were rather barren down there, a sign perhaps of the reducing role of the local facilities with certain functions moving away. The office still held the standard homeliness of personal workspaces though, calendars and cartoons on the walls, organised messes.

At the end of the corridor, we enterred the holding room. The fridge. A rather small room and very plain, a simple drywipe white board held the names currently ‘visiting’ the mortuary while two giant metal boxes lined the side walls. Engine whirrs and clunks reminded us of the air conditioning and refridgeration around us, even though the room itself barely felt any cooler than the outside.

The thing that surprised all of us was that these large boxes, with their many doors holding pull out drawers, were in fact hollow and vast inside. These are not one person per box. but a giant box that a person only has a space in. Obviously this is to help circulate cold air, chilling an area rather than cooling lots of small places. The metal boxes must have been about eight or nine feet deep, which each drawer ‘slab’ about seven foot. I could easily have laid alongside and had space all around.

It was quite reassuring for some of my more claustrophobic colleagues to know that actually they weren’t going to be in tightly packed isolation, to me it merely removed one myth from the pool. Obviously this might just be because it was a small local hospital, and that maybe it’s different for bigger institutions or indeed police coroner offices, but unless something exciting happens it’s most likely to be the one we will visit.

We moved on to the adjoining room, through a small door, and found ourselves in the autopsy room. A desk level shelf circled the room, with one side of the room holding the metal work area that held the sink and utensil area. The metal surfaces were all grated, allowing things to be washed through to gullies beneath and keep everything clinically clean.

Behind the work area was a window with closed metal shades, at Jim’s request I pressed a button on the wall and the shades opened to reveal a small ‘standing room only’ observation area that would fit barely four. The observation room doesn’t seem to be much, aside from the occassional medical student or interested doctor overseeing a particular case.

There were several humanising elements to the room, from the small radio in the corner, a simple 1980s style radio with metal aerial poking up and no cassette or cd deck, and a number of handscrawled notes pinned to the walls. Had it not been for the two slabs, the room could have been as much a bakery or deli kitchen as a mortuary.

It was rather odd, touring the place and seeing the equipment at a time when they were unused. This isn’t to say I’d want to actually walk around with half open bodies around me, nor is it a case that it wasn’t obvious what the role of the place was, but in the quiet normalcy of the place it didn’t hold the feeling that I’d expected to feel in the place. Even with the slabs.

In the centre of the room were two metal boxes, not beds but still places people would be laid. We’ve all seen them on shows like CSI, but just in case you’ve missed them, these boxes are raised off the floor and the surface is multiple grated plates that seem to be able to concertina if needed to lift. The grates allow fluids and smaller ‘bits’ to slip through, with handheld and fixed showerheads being able to wash the viscera away. Underneath the grates, the insides slope into channels, allowing the wash to travel into small tanks at the foot of the boxes.

One of the thoughts that came to mind when looking at these boxes with their designed channels for directly fluids and their square blockiness, was the thought of all the images and movies that depict sacrificial altars from early civilizations. All around them was sparsity, tiled floors and special tools that require their own methods of treatment, all to be worked on thick pedestals with gullies to drain. A rather cheap mind trick, but one that nonetheless was bound to come forth when faced with it.

It was rather interesting to learn that these tanks are even more required thanks to the Human Tissue Act, which is Parliamentary legislation regarding what has to be done to anything taken from a patient. These days even swabs of saliva taken from a deceased must be returned to the body if so requested, so being sure of what has been removed even inadvertantly is a must.

We were guided back the way we came and taken in to the last area of our tour, and the area we were told had had the most recent investment. The waiting and viewing rooms for family. It was tidy, neat and minimalist in the waiting room, just carpets, a few chairs and a water cooler. A small stained glass window showed a picture of a dove in flight. There was no music, which was actually a lot more peaceful than if someone had chosen to pipe in tunes – the room didn’t bear any real religious imagery, the dove not being intended in that manner – this was a room of comfort for any.

The final room was the one that affected me most, but I didn’t mention to my colleagues until much later why and not really how much. The viewing room had been decorated and looked after, a manner most often missed in hospitals as most often the hospital will pass people straight to funeral directors to deal with viewings, but here we had a room in soft pastels, the reverse of the stained glass and artificial though fragranced flowers. A trolley bed had been left out for display and it brought home what the room was, just like in a funeral directors this was a room for seeing a loved one. I’d seen these rooms many times, all the way back to when I was a little boy, and this room immediately brought back memories of those I’d seen at wakes. It was tasteful, but at the same time slightly harrowing.

One other element tugged deep inside, a curtain was set up across one wall to hide the door to the back area and the additional tools for the room. This curtain was left open, as we were touring on a vacant day, and amongst the random pieces there were the items for viewing the younger people – cribs and bassinets. It brought home a harsh reality about life, about daily events in a hospital, about what people and families go through around you, and a sympathy for the people who have to be professional and dedicated to deal with this and still keep an attitude of normalcy. It hurt, but at the same time there was a feeling of relief and peace, the kind found in knowing and learning.

I found some peace to know that should anything happen to me or a loved one, the process is dealt with respect and dignity. It may sound weird, might even sound disturbing, but if anyone reading this should ever get the opportunity to be given this kind of tour, then no matter how scared it is rewarding to go on it, and you may find that fear being quietened – not silenced, but given a rest.