Ash scattering
My Gran (as mentioned in my previous post) regularly asked, begged and pleaded to go home in her last year or two (mostly spent between hospitals and the nursing home). Of course it was impossible to do as she wished because of the care she required, added to this she often thought that wherever she was, was actually a new extension my uncle had built on her house?! i remember one deluded story about her and a friend from the nursing home having been to Australia. That very morning. or the princely fare of £2!.

I digress. Because she'd always asked to go home we decided that after she'd been cremated we would 'bury' her ashes under a new rose bush that we would plant in the little garden she'd enjoyed so much at home (a long 'raised bed' that my brickie uncle had built to waist height for her so she could garden without having to kneel). It felt a bit cheesy to be honest, like the aim of a little ceremony hadn't quite been met and seemed to evolve into a chore.

Similar to the post below, my uncle didn't think about the effect of dumping a large tub of fine powder into a small hole, and duly got a liberal dusting of 'Gran' over his upper body & head. My brother and I looked at one another and I actually made my mouth bleed by biting my cheek to suppress the giggles.


On the subject of ashes, I think my mother still has my stepdad in her house somewhere. She'd planned to scatter them in Spain, but hasn't been back yet. The odd thing was that over the course of her moving house (about a year after he died) I accumulated a few items in the boot of my car, as I always tend to do.

A week or two after the move, I was cleaning the car & emptied the boot of these miscellaneous items;
My stepdads ashes,
A garden spade,
A book on pathology,
Some sensetive papers including my stepbrothers suicide note, numerous death certificates / coroners reports and a stack of debt-letters.

Thank fuck I wasn't pulled over & had the car searched that week!
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 15:01, Reply)

great story
it was in the new york times a few years back:

www.beamused.me.uk/page1241.htm

im not sure if its true, but its funny either way.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 14:46, 2 replies)

Partial...
The Hairy Aerosol's post below reminds me...

I used to be a postgrad tutor in ethics to medical students at Brum. I'd spend an hour a week with a group of pre-clinicals in whatever room the Med School could spare.

One day, the room assigned to me wasn't a room at all. It was an anatomy bay that happened not to be in use at the moment.

I'm not going to go into detail... but of all the days to have a churning stomach and thumping hangover...
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 14:24, Reply)

Blowing in the wind
I saw my Dad die a horrible painful death from cancer a few years back and felt, as you'd expect, pretty shit about it. All that stuff you read about people slipping away is bollocks. My Dad died waving his arms around terrified of whatever he saw coming his way. Nasty stuff.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, he was cremated and my Mum, brother and I took his ashes to the cemetary where his Mum and Dad are buried. I hadn't got the guts and Mum was in pieces so my Brother did the scattering thing.

Now, my brother didn't really think things through on this one because rather than crouch down and carefully scatter the ashes of our recently departed loved one he stood up and just tipped him out. Cue a particularly strong gust of wind which blew most of my Dad all over my brother's trousers and shoes. The rest of him blew in all our faces and was duly ingested into our lungs. Now, I don't know whether you've been around someone with advanced cancer, but it has a very particular smell which is a long way from pleasant. I'll always remember breathing in and realising that I'd just snorted my Dad. Not in the Keith Richards (allegedly) way, just by breathing.

I had to turn away at this point as I was pissing myself laughing at the ghostly figure of my brother covered in dead Dad's ashes and thought Mum might find it a tad inappropriate. I managed to get it together and some hours later when I got him on his own I asked my brother what he'd thought when Dad blew all over his trousers and shoes. "I thought it was bloody hilarious" he said, adding "He always was getting under my feet". The best bit is, my old man would have pissed himself laughing just as much as we did. RIP Dad. :)

P.S. Without a word of a lie, I smelt that cancer smell my Dad had twice in the next 6 months in 2 different places when I was on my own. I reckon they do hang around a bit you know...
(littlechav Suffering from too many red bulls since, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 14:17, 1 reply)

When I was little
My old mum worked as a trainee nurse. One day I came with her to the hospital and some doctors had played a joke on her, something like "could you bring mrs williams her tea" not knowing I was with my mother (As I was takin' a dump) anyway, I come back to see my old mum white as a sheet at having tried to give mrs williams her tea only to find she was dead. I just thought she looked like she was sleeping, my mother rushed my out of the room and I've only recently been told that she was dead. I thought for years that my mum was scared of the gruesome head wound that led to her death.
(Chubster Will kill your children and burn your wife on, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 14:13, Reply)

Absolutely off-topic
I finally have a job interview with a large company that appears to be quite stable. Wish me luck...

EDIT: Thanks, one and all!

I may soon have a dead body to dispose of.

Recently my girlfriend's Jack Russell terrier has been digging in the yard after moles, leaving craters everywhere. Now, I know that this is what they were bred to do- but after nearly breaking my ankle in one of these chuckholes I limped into the house where the Lunatic Artist sat with the little turd-burglar on her lap. I looked the dog in the eye and roared, "Dig one more hole out there and I'm gonna fill it with you, and the only marker you'll have is your nub tail sticking out!"

The dog looked terrified, but the girlfriend laughed...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 13:58, 12 replies)

Only one....
A mate of mine died in his 20's by crashing through a roof he was working on and breaking his fall with his head. Went to see him in his box, and the thing inside was clearly no longer said mate - it was just the waxy, lifeless, representation of the shell my mate used to live in. I wasn't sad to see him like that, but sad that he wouldn't be anymore after they closed the lid.

I was a bit disappointed in a way. Don't really know what I expected, but I always thought that a dead body would have had more of an effect on me.
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 13:54, Reply)

not me
Mate of my brother works on his dads building sites regularly to supliment his pitiful income and saw something that could be from a movie.

One of the Polish guys was hauling a barrow across the yard whilst someone was moving a load of metal poles (thin metal poles about as thick as a 1p coin) on a crain overhead.

*TWANG* brothers mate looks up and sees its now raining solid metal poles and can only stand there slack jawed as they rained down upon the Polish guy skewering him where he stood

Other than that was shown the Nick Berg video by a "mate" who kept telling me 'something really funny happens' and saw a 8 year old girl who was killed by a pitbull on a shock site back when i was about 14(from the chin up there was little left) and it still haunts me til this day, hurrah!
(Xyphious : Sinkin' Gin since '85, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 13:10, Reply)

Better than a story about mix-tapes.
Any dedicated Scottish clubbers reading today? Good, because you will no doubt be familiar with the name of Pure. For the uninitiated,Pure was a legendary techno club which started in Edinburgh in 1990 and ran until 2007 (I think, but I could be wrong).

The punters at Pure were like a family, no other club could put on a night with 2000 dancing nutters, 3 dancefloors, in an unfamiliar city and still keep a strong snese of community. A few of the top DJs that
plied their trade at Pure include: Marshall Jefferson, Derrick May, Andy Weatherall, Orbital, David Holmes, Aphex Twin and a plethora of other musicologists with the God-given ability induce a fervour of melodic
euphoria.

Anyhow, apologies for the nostalgia-based digression. Being as I am just a young whippersnapper (in Edinburgh clubland terms anyway) I was only present for the tail-end of Pure's existence. Several of my nights at
Pure are just memory holes, but there is one occasion which is still reasonably clear in my mind.

3am had come and gone, resident DJs Twitch and Brainstorm rounded off their set and the bouncers were attempting to remove the stragglers from the club. Myself and a pal were attempting to glide up the street on
thought-activated metahoverboards, which used the earths magnetic field to hover inches above the ground (but our lower limbs had turned to glass and felt somewhat precarious). For those unable to read between the lines: we were rubbered on a cocktail of mind-bending drugs.

So we tapped into the energy of surrounding lay-lines, assessed the positions of the stars and charted a route to a friendly destination,
where we could partake in more substance abuse and cups of tea.

As we went to walk up the road we saw a figure sitting on the pavement with his back against the Venue, eyes closed. This was hardly a rare
sight after Pure, so we didn't think too much of it, but my compatriot gave the fellow a friendly tap with his foot and told him "You can't sleep there dude, the bizzies will pick you up and you'll wake up in the cells". He showed no signs of response, so we assumed he was in an MDMA stupor or down a K-Hole, informed the bouncers there was "some fucked
guy slepping against the wall" and wandered home.

Upon waking the next afternoon I made a cup of tea and sat down to smoke a bong, when my friend called me: "Did you hear about the guy that died at Pure last night?" So it turned out that the poor man we'd thought was simply asleep had actually passed away on a night out with his mates.

The actual details of what happened have become something of an urban legend: apparently he had a long-term illness and had an adverse reaction to his medication, causing him to go into shock, and rather than collapsing in the middle of the dancefloor he just walked outside, sat down on the pavement and just....... died. Of course, this is probably a romanticised version of the true events, which will have been lost through the chinese whispers of the Edinburgh club community.

I did suffer some pangs of guilt at not having done anything at the time, but it turned out he had sat there for several hours before the club finished, and had been dead for a long time when the paramedics were called.

Standard apologies for length and lack of funny.
(JasperSinister is offering two tickets to the gun show, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 12:56, Reply)

I'm a doctor.
I've seen fucking loads.
You get used to it after a while (you have to, else you'd go mad), but never completely used to it (the moment I stop getting that lump in my throat every time somebody dies is the moment I leave medicine).

Certifying old people dead is momentous, because you are putting the final full-stop on a life that has seen so much. It is an honour to have that responsibility.

Being present at the death of a child is nothing short of devastating, and no matter how hard you try it is impossible not to be affected. I used to work on a cancer unit, and the utter unwavering bravery of children who were terminally ill never ceases to humble me.
Can you imagine helping a 14 year old choose songs she wanted playing at her funeral on a Saturday, and then being there as she takes her final breath on the Sunday? After she has told you that she was sad that she'd never go grey or have kids or get married?

A dead body is just a thing. An inanimate object. Such a contrast with the living, and when you are present at the moment when the living become the dead, you wonder how the fuck people can so willingly kill others.

Sorry, a maudlin post. I blame Friday and a lack of sleep. Tonight I shall have a beer, kick the cat, and rejoice in the company of those I love.

EDIT: Though the body I had for my dissection classes didn't feel like a human at all. The formaldehyde stinks and turns the whole body into a grey leathery clammy thing. The foot hadn't been properly preserved and had fungus growing on it. When we sawed the top of the skull off we all ended up with the gritty feeling of powdered skull in our mouths. We called him "Big Vern" because he had a monstrous penis (like a baby's arm). By all accounts he was quite a character when alive, and we raised several glasses to him when the dissection year was over.
( sm.pl.crt.rs I don't fucking know, do I?, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 12:48, 12 replies)

Dead people
I've seen three although one of them I didn't know was dead at the time.

This was our landlord, Charles, who lived in a flat in the same building as my Dum and Dad and me. When I was about seven, Charles died while cooking something on the stove and when my parents found him his hand had been cooked. They packed me off to my sister's flat in the same bulding while they dealt with Charles.

When I left my sister's flat to use the loo on the landing between her flat and Charles's, I looked down at his flat to see the door open and him leaning against a table. I didn't see his face or his hand (luckily!). I thought it strange that he didn't move or acknowledge my presence. After I's dealt with the pressing business of going to the loo, the door had been shut and I thought nothing more of it until my parents told me.

I really don't remember why they had had to prop him up against the table but I am so glad that horribly burnt hand wasn't on view.

The other two dead people were my parents many years later. My Mum's funeral was funny in a way as the whole funeral cortege, hearse included, were delayed by a very slow almost-broken truck and had to overtake it in order to get to the crematorium on time. Typical of my Mum.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 12:48, Reply)

Is it just me?
Reading through this weeks posts has served to confirm (again) something I have held dear for a long time: I am strangely comforted by the idea of dying. Knowing that at some time in the future all this will be over and with a bit of luck I might be able to embark on another great adventure. I'm not unhappy or a morose suicidal goth\emo type. I simply find the idea very comforting.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 12:45, 5 replies)

Grandma's Corpse
Only seen one dead body in my lifetime, that was my Grandmothers. After a long illness she passed on surrounded by her family (we should all be so lucky!). Couldn't help but think that she looked quite thin and fraile, soon thought otherwise when I was a paul bearer at her funeral, coffin was a heavy S.O.B! Also thought it was a bit much to spend to £2000 on a coffin then bury the bastard!

Not funny but you asked!
(Krizla6.9, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 12:12, Reply)

*Spang!*
Trembling, I gripped the shovel in my hands, not quite realising the enormity of what I'd just done.

I looked down at ex-Mrs PJM, lying out cold on the floor. This was the result of one argument too many, I'd finally flipped out at the relentless taunts, snide comments and outright screaming condemnations of my character and person. One comment had flipped me over the edge and I'd momentarily lost the capacity for reasoned thought and swiftly resolved the situation.

Emotions ran through my mind at a stupifying rate, guilt, rage, shame, remorse, anger... My brain was close to overloading when all of a sudden my thoughts began to coalesce. In instances of extreme stress, the human brain will grasp upon the strangest of notions, jumbled thoughts will become clear as the instinct for survival (oh the irony!) takes over.

Hide the body. Tell no one.

I looked down, she lay on the floor on her front, arms splayed out and face down. I knelt to check the pulse in her neck, just to make sure.

Nothing.

I felt the emotion rise in my throat, choking me. There was no going back, no means of making amends. This was absolutely and utterly final.

Leaving her on the floor, I picked up the shovel and made my way to the garden, where I hurled the blade of the shovel into the ground with all my might. Sobbing, acid tears of self recrimination flowed down my cheeks as the frenzied digging ensued.

The next two hours were a blur. All I know is at the end of it, I was staring at a roughly rectangular hole, six feet deep by six feet tall and three feet wide. Guiltily I looked at the pile of earth and wondered aloud what I should do with the leftover soil. I almost laughed when I recalled the soil bags stitched into prisoners' trousers in The Great Escape.

I pulled the limp and lifeless body up onto my back and carried it outside. I uttered a guilty farewell as I unceremoniously dumped her into the hole and begain to fill in the soil, ironically using the very instrument of her demise to do so. The shovel would have to be disposed of.

Finished, I wiped the tears from my cheeks and walked back into the house. I washed my hands furiously to rid myself of incriminating dirt, before picking up the telephone and dialling the number of my best friend's phone.

"Clive..." I sobbed as he picked it up

"There's been a terrible accident. I need you here quickly. Something awful has happened" I gulped, in between sobs.

Twenty minutes later I heard the sound of his car outside. I opened the door and ushered him into the house.

"What's going on?" he enquired, clearly deeply concerned for my wellbeing.

"It's ex-Mrs PJM. We had a fight. I was holding a shovel..." I was fighting for breath.

"Where is she?" He asked.

"Out here..." I led him outside into the garden.

"What have you done?" he asked in an accusing voice.

"You've left her arse sticking up out of the ground!" he exclaimed.

He was indeed right.

"Well, I needed somewhere to park my bike".
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Fri 29 Feb 2008, 11:51, 6 replies)

Daily deceased
Every day we all have our 'routine' to get up in the morning, wash, change and travel to work..

I travel a short distance to work (10 miles) in a shitty little workhorse of a motor, and virtually everday I would be stuck behind the same black BMW.. the kind of driver that irritates the shit out of you.. braking at roundabouts when there is nothing coming, and drove at least 10 mph under the speed limit..surely just to piss off anyone who was trying to get to work on time.

Well I was going about my usual routine, and for some reason I was running about 5 minutes late, and as I was entering the industrial estate I noticed the black BMW stationary, on the wrong side of the road, engine running.

Another driver had pulled up, and I thought they'd crashed, but as I got closer I saw the driver - a fat businessman in his 40's at a guess, slumped dead behind the wheel. I asked the guy who was first on the scene if there was anything I could do, and he shook his head and said he was waiting for the cops, but thought the guy had a massive heart attack.

Serves him right for driving like a twat I thought.. and more than a little ironic that he should cark it in his motor.
(TheRiddler Hmmmmm... I concur., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 11:50, Reply)

I've already posted about seeing my dad's body
Here www.b3ta.com/questions/deadbodies/post124732
But I never told you about the funneral from hell!
At the crem all goes according to plan until the wake that is....

My dad liked a tipple so we held the wake at his local (rough as hell) pub.
Being the angry wee lass that I was I got very drunk very quickley and me and mr woodbine left early. We had a huge fight but was soon sorted! The next day I called my sister to say sorry for running out and how did it go? Well

A friend of her had brought her kids along which were playing with a locals dog (that was in the bar) the dog turned and bit 1 of the lads so 1st one to the hospital.
My uncle decided it was time to tell the rest of the family what he thought of them cakes were thrown (apparently) punches chucked around and he became knocked out another ambulance! Then my Aunty decides she's off and being a little drunk falls down the stairs and splits her head open- ambulance 2 called! The whole family were then kicked out ( can you imagine being thrown out of a wake)

So all night my sister was in A and E running inbetween 3 cubicals. Oh how I laughed! Me I was comatose on the sofa after all the bacardi and cokes jock style!

You had to be there and I missed it :-(

Length- about 8 hours A and E was very busy
( Mrswoodbine finally has her own account., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 11:50, Reply)

For this, you need 'Our Tune' playing in your head and the voice of Simon Bates reading...
I’ve already written about my late mum. This is a related tale.

Now, at 37, I am the oldest of three. However, that wasn’t always the case. Before I was born, my mum and dad had a daughter, Lisa. My older sister, who I never knew.

Lisa died the year before I was born. In the days before health and safety was a national obsession, people didn’t really think very much about consequences. Lisa, at 18 months old, had somehow (no one is sure to this day) managed to climb up and reach the medicine cabinet, and proceeded to devour a lot of pills – brightly coloured, she obviously thought they were sweets. As soon as anyone realised what had happened, Lisa was rushed to hospital, but it was too late and she died of a massive overdose. So my parents had to witness their dead, 18 month old daughter, lying still and cold in hospital, with the knowledge that it could have been prevented with a bit of foresight.

I never really heard them talk about it in all the years I was growing up. Apart from my dad once, opened up and recalled the total anguish they were both going through at the time. The story made the local papers. There was an inquest that dragged on for months, during which they were both under suspicion of having a direct contribution to her death. They couldn’t even bury her straight away, so the funeral was delayed for weeks.

I grew up knowing that I had an older sister who had died, and sometimes wonder what it would have been like had she lived. My nana often talked about her, and still kept a photo of her on her dresser – she adored her. When my nana took ill, and ended up in hospital, my sister was pregnant with her second child – my nephew, and Godson. She was 2 weeks overdue, and so eventually had to induced. The day Kyle was born, I went into the hospital to tell nana the news – she was unconscious by this point, but there was a flicker of acknowledgement. 4am the next day I got a call – she had passed away during the night, obviously hanging on until she knew that Kyle was born and everything was OK.

Kyle was born on February 4th. He shares his birthday with Lisa...
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 11:46, 2 replies)

A while ago
In 1959 I remember stumbling across some plane wreckage in Wisconsin and found a dead Buddy.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 11:38, Reply)

Mum
Like many people these days my life has been touched by cancer. 9 years ago this week my mother finally succumbed to ovarian cancer after a 2 year battle. We knew it was coming, and as depressing and upsetting as it was watching her wither away before our eyes, we were able to say goodbye and tell her that we loved her before she finally passed away.

I wasn’t there when it happened; I had spent the week before with her at home and decided to go back to work as she seemed to be fairly stable, although highly drugged on morphine. During the first morning back at work, I received “the call” from my Dad. I travelled back to the family home. As my mum had spent the latter stages of her illness at home, she still there whilst the preparations for the funeral were made.

My mother had lost a huge amount of weight in the months before her death, and it was difficult seeing what she had become from the person who had brought me up. It took a lot for me to actually go and say goodbye to her one last time, but I’m glad that I did. I now no longer associate that last image I have of her as the person who was such a huge part of my life, and I do feel that it helped.


On a side note to this, the funeral was a slightly puzzling and even amusing tale. During the priest’s sermon, bearing in mind that I had attended this church with my mother for years while I was growing up and it being a tiny country parish, the priest managed to get my name wrong not once but twice.

I still have the picture in my head, of my dad, sister and me sitting in the front row of the congregation, struggling to hold back tears, as the priest utters the unforgettable words “And at this difficult time our thoughts go out to Mummy Blue’s family, Daddy Blue, Sister Blue and Edmond.” Strangely enough, my name isn’t Edmond; my mother wasn’t that cruel. And as most people in the church knew this, as small uncomfortable ripple went through the congregation. Except from my sister and me, who were by now struggling to hold back the giggles. This would have been fine and we would have managed to keep this under control if he hadn’t repeated the exact same words, barely 3 minutes later. This time my sister and me just looked at each other and laughed out loud. We weren’t the only ones either. I spent the rest of the day being called Edmond by everyone at the wake, or being quizzed on what I thought of my new brother.

So I think that I must thank the priest, who managed to make me laugh on one of the most difficult days of my life. I know that my mum would have found it hilarious too.

Sorry for the length.
(Blue_in_Exile, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 11:20, Reply)

Yes, a great many . . .
and the reactions many and varied.
As is posted on my profile, I'm a training surgeon (Orthopaedics). So, I've been a medical student (dead bodies and dissection - yes, formaldehyde STINKS), the brand new intern who does the night shift certifying those who have dies in their sleep, the resident/registrar who works in Emergency and watches those who come in trying very hard to die - some do, some don't. I now work at a major trauma hospital in Melbourne (gee, not many of those) and get to see just how close to dead people can get, and still be breathing. Death as a concept does not make me a quivering mess, nor has it turned me into a robot. I don't baulk at touching a dead body.
Also, as an adult of 32, I have lost 1 uncle, 3 grandparents (natural causes) and at least 3 colleagues (all suicides).

Credentials sorted, what perspective can I give you on death?

...

It's possibly one of the few events in life that inspires almost the entire spectrum of emotion (perhaps together with birth).
It is the great leveller - we all arrive naked and screaming into this world, and all we have on leaving is our family, friends and our past deeds to commemorate us.
It can be a violent, peaceful, humorous, relieving, tedious, welcome, feared, revered, abhorred, celebrated, catastrophic, overwhelming and unexpected event.

My stories of death and dead bodies? I will relate only two: both work-related - one which gave me nightmares for a very long time, and one which made me ashamed of myself. Deaths in my family have been mostly unexpected and in one case, I'm ashamed to say I didn't actually like one of my relatives. So, being a good girl and not speaking ill of the dead (see Mum? I do listen on occasion), here are two stories from Mrs Legless: newbie doctor.

Story the first:
Internship - country hospital, run by 5 interns who worked day/night shifts alternating. Trauma call one Friday - 4WD vs stationwagon. Seeing as I have a night off, I wander into Emergency to help with the work (we helped each other in that job).
I was given a brief rundown of the accident - high speed, drunk driver vs car with a family on holiday. Drunk driver - broken jaw; Father in other car - airlifted to Melbourne: bilateral amputations of his legs. Daughter - internal injuries: transferred to Children's Hospital. Mother and 16 year old son, deceased. Would you please go and certify the deceased in the morgue Anna? So - off I go.
Inside 2 plastic bags are two bodies - a young mother and her son. Both of them look like they could have been asleep (no external injuries - they died due to cervical spine injuries). Both look healthy, whole and are still dressed in their ordinary clothes. But they are dead. No pulse, no breathing, no response to sternal pressure. Had they been covered in blood, deformed in the limbs or trunk, perhaps with obvious trauma I might have felt less unnerved. As it was, I became an insomniac for about a month afterward - all I could see was this young Mum and her son: alive one minute travelling from NSW on holiday, dead the next - being stored in a freezer, like cargo. Thankfully I was excused from a court appearance (the drunk appealed against 2 manslaughter charges), but I slept with the lights on until I returned to Melbourne in June.

Story the Second:
I spent almost six months working in Emergency in an Eastern suburbs hospital, well known for its drug-seeking population. One full moon (ever notice nutters come to ED during a full moon?), one young girl was brought in - heroin OD, trying very, very hard to die. A senior and I get to work, making her breathe again, trying to find out what other shit she had in her veins, and giving her the right antidote for it. During a lull in proceedings, I glanced through her notes.
Personality disorder, anxiety. Multiple suicide attempts - more that 10. Self-harm. Six year old daughter, custody issues - apparently the little girl found her again this time.
Lovely, I think. Looks like she tried it out again tonight. "Pity she didn't do it properly - a bigger dose, and no one to call the ambulance" I say to my colleague. "Save us the trouble of having to bring back her sorry arse from the dead each time."

Stop.
Think about what you just said Anna.

Is this girl less of a human being than the wholesome family that was destroyed a few months ago?


Doctors - we don't deal with death any better that all of you . . . we can be just as empathetic, just as clueless, just helpless . . .
( Mrs Legless . . . belongs to, well, you know . . . :), Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:59, 5 replies)

Defibrillators
Walking to college quite a few years ago, me and a large group of friends walked past a guy lying in the road. There were a couple of paramedics kneeling by him, stripping off his shirt. Then they got the defibrillator out and *zzzzzzzz* gave him a good old shock, didn't see him do the full on body arch from in the films.
All we did was wait, about 6 foot from the action, for the traffic on the other side of the road to stop so we could cross. Conversations went on as usual, a couple of furtive glances were taken, but on the whole British upperlip triumphed and not a word was said, not even when the paramedics gave up with the shock pads and, I assume, the bloke was pronounced dead.
Ho Hum.
Maybe we are all desensitised by the media. (though I did feel pretty sick a few years before when I saw a woman under a truck wheel screaming in agony)
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:46, Reply)

Not a Human
This is about an animal dead body, and is pretty inconsequential so doesn't compare to others stories here, but some my find amusement in my futility and crapness.

There is a path that runs north of my estate, alongside a wide stream, with fields to the right. I often walk the dog along there.

Last night on our evening walk, we happened across a pigeon trotting along the path. The dog, being the mental chaser he is, chased it a bit, but it didn't fly away, just ran into the scrub of the fields, then kind of gave up and collapsed.

The dog, also being a dipstick, didn't know what to do at this point, so just stood by and watched. I had a look at the pigeon, and it appeared to have lost a fair few feathers from one wing, but otherwise fine, if a little exhausted.

So in a chivalrous state of mind I decided I would save this pigeon!

With tales of Karma from last week's QOTW fresh in my mind I gently picked up the bird, and placed him in a nearby tree, close to the stream. I figured that he could rest up there, get some energy back, and not be at the mercy of foxes or cats.

Me and the dog continued on our walk. We walked about half a mile more, turned around and headed back home. I was looking forward to looking in the tree on the way back and seeing my new pigeon friend chilling on his branch. However, when I got to the tree Pigeon buddy was nowhere to be seen. I looked around a bit in confusion, and then I saw him.

He was floating face down on the other side of the stream.

He had presumably fallen out at some point and drowned. If it wasn't for the brambles and railway line blocking any entry to the other side of the stream I would have tried to save him again.

I'd actually managed to shorten this pigeon's life, by suspending it next to a deep stream when it was exhausted and couldn't fly.

It would have been better off if I'd left it be!

Bollocks.


Edit: Bloody hell, I seem to be unable to get a short length.
(stubbledchin, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:38, 2 replies)

soup
One of my friend's grandmothers had died a couple of weeks previously, and he was chatting to his mate about it, who is a vet.

"She'll be a skeleton now", my friend said ruefully.
"She won't actually", replied the vet, "she'll be soup".

My friend looked slightly cheered by this and said "ah well thats nice. She always did make nice soup".
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:32, 1 reply)

Death campers
I know a guy who has an old Mercedes hearse. He has put a bed in the back, and travels everywhere in it.

Is it just me who finds the idea of sleeping where countless dead bodies have lain a little odd?

(Mind you, I suppose a lot of converted ambulances aren't much better either.)
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:28, 1 reply)

The killing fields and S21
Went there when I was in Phnom Penh. So many bodies/skulls it sort of gets so big that you no longer comprehend the magnitude, until... until you get to the tree.

You see the bastards killed most with a blow to the back of the head with a shovel. Men, women kids. Everyone.

Except the babies.

As they were too small/couldn't sit up, the guards smashed their heads off a tree, in which they had helpfully inserted some nails so as to speed things up. Oh yeah, at S21, they thoughtfully photographed the prisoners, and they are many of women with their babies. They all were murdered.

I have never wanted to waste someone before, but on that day, given the opportunity I would have had no qualms whatsoever taking out a former guard or two.

Sometimes all evil needs in order to succeed is for good men to do nothing.
(mowlem, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:27, 1 reply)

Depressing QOTW!
Well this is a miserable QOTW! Might as well tell my story, though I warn you now - it's not funny.

I have had the misfortune of seeing a dead body. My Grandad died when I was 19 and I had the unpleasant task of identifying him.

Basically I went to Uni in the city over from where he had lived for many years. It was probably only a 20 minute bus ride away from where I was. My Grandad was a very quiet man, we used to always joke that he was never too sure what to do with us grandchildren once we were too old for penny mixes. I had been at Uni for around about 6 months and hadn't been to see him in all that time. I'd never really spent any time with him without all my family there and I knew that it would be awkward for both of us.

One night I got a phone call from my Mum saying that her and my Aunt hadn't been able to get an answer on his phone all evening and that neither of them had spoken to them in about a week. Would I go over to check on him? This was at about 8pm so I got the bus across knowing that this wasn't going to be good. He was 81 and had suffered a heart attack 4 years previously. I got to the house and the door was locked from the inside. Police were called and after around 3 hours they decided to break a back window to get access.

They found my Grandad on the kitchen floor. One of the neighbours identified him but they needed a second ID. I didn't want my Mum to have to go through that (plus they couldn't remove the body until it had been done) so I did. Worst thing I've ever had to do. He looked so small and tragic lying on the kitchen floor. He'd obviously had another heart attack in the kitchen when he got up in the morning, had fallen and smashed his face off the counter. He was still in his pajamas and looked like he was in so much pain.

It took me a long time to get over that, I had to take a break from Uni and eventually ended up dropping out. I still feel guilty that I never went to visit him when I lived so close. I feel like he died alone and in pain and that I should have been there.

Apologies for length and depressing content.
( commiegirl21 Can't think of anything witty on..., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 10:24, 2 replies)

The time my Dad lost a dead body
Well, after a stint in the medical bit fo the army, he eventually ended up back in Blighty with my mum and a kid on the way, looking for a job he could do - given his medical experience, something medical made sense, and he ended up working as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.

The tales from these days are many and varied, but this particular one happened around Christmas time in the days when it still snowed.

Every so often, one of the patients would croak and shuffle off this mortal coil, so some poor sod would have to wheel them over to the mortuary. On this particular occasion, my Dad was hauled from the middle of the Christmas party with a colleague of his, both a little tipsy, and ordered to take a body over there.

They duly wrapped the cadaver in a sheet, put him on a trolley bed and set off for the mortuary, all the way over the other side of the grounds.

The route went in a kind of horseshoe shape, through some of the wooded area of the grounds, so that none of the patients saw the body being carted off and got scared. Thing is, it wasn't exactly the flattest of routes, and at one point in the journey there was a big dip in the path.

Needless to say, they reached the dip and the trolley got stuck. Being a little druank, rather than lift it out, my Dad and his mate decided the way to move it was to give it a bit of a run up and push it up the other side, giving this corpse one final ride. Pulling back to get a bit of speed up, they launched forwards only for the trolley to stick, and catapault their unfortunate cargo off into the snow, at which point it rolled off down a slight incline and vanished. White sheet, white snow.

They returned with the trolley and said nothing...
( Sonic James Doom forgetting the date since... umm..., Fri 29 Feb 2008, 9:49, 1 reply)

The great war
Granddad had so many stories about his time in France during WWI. I particularly remember the tale of the rabbit's foot.

As everyone knows, a rabbit's foot is considered good luck, and the Tommies were always keen to find a rabbit that had been killed by the shells. My granddad's squadron had a squirrel's leg instead because they couldn't find a rabbit. By common agreement, it was considered to be at least 75% as lucky as a rabbit's foot. Or so they thought.

Nobby Millhouse was the first to try out the luckiness of the leg. As they went over the top at Ypres, he was hit square in the forehead by a machine gun bullet and fell back into the trench dead. After a committee meeting, it was decided that he had kept it in his pocket rather than pinning it brooch-like to his breast, as was the tradition.

Next was Arthur Beckwithshaw. The bullets whizzed about his head but he remained untouched... until he slipped on some spilled guts, fell into a shellhole full of barbed wire and was mauled to death by a wolf that had been sheltering there. The wolf was later shot and the squirrel's leg retrieved.

Arguing that the leg should be worn claw-facing-south rather than north, Stanley Calthorpe was the next to try his luck. As his comrades were mown down by machine gun fire, young Stanley strolled nonchalantly across no-man's land without a care, stopping to file his nails as massacre erupted around him. It was only when he reached the German trenches that he realised he had forgotten his gun. He was hacked into mincemeat by bayonets and the Jerries threw the squirrel's leg back in disgust.

By now, a pattern had emerged and the next Tommy to wear the lucky leg was Bobby "Moley" Jackson - so called because his vision barely extended beyond his nose. As the squad went over the top, Bobby meandered without injury in the wrong direction, towards a village that had been untouched by shelling. There, he stumbled into a brothel, whose sex-starved girls pleasured him in so many exotic ways that he remained grinning even at the time of his death. Then they plied him with fine wines, gourmet tit-bits and a number of relaxing spa treatments. It was only spoiled by the 80mm howitzer shell that crashed through the roof and landed squarely in his ringpiece as he was mounting a blonde, evaporating him in an instant.

Well, the squirrel's leg was never found, but granddad has since maintained that it is more lucky than the rabbit's limb and he has been imprisoned by the RSPCA for mutilating squirrels in his back garden.
(frankspencer, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 9:46, 4 replies)