aliceismalice

I do a lot of post mortem care at the hospital before the funeral home receives the body. What can I do during my cares to make your job easier?

Also, I talk to the person's body as I'm cleaning them, explaining what I'm doing as if they could hear me. Do you do anything similar?

That's all I do, make sure the head of the bed is down and make sure there isn't any strange positioning going on but I never force anything. I also wash the face and clean anything soiled from bodily fluids. If it isn't an autopsy I remove any invasive lines.

I once had a patient expire around 4pm and the family stayed with the person until 11pm. So it can be a long time before the body is retrieved.

Thank you for what you do.

Thank you for what you are doing, especially in South Dakota. As someone who lives here I feel helpless in regards to the pipeline issue. Thank you!!

Not OP but I think that it should be pointed out is that there is not one monolithic "Native American" culture. Culture varies a lot from region to region. The NW Coast culture is quite different than Plains culture, which is different from the SW, etc.

I had two leader dog flunkies growing up. One became allergic to fleas and had to be retired and the other didn't make it through training because she was flakey. Both fantastic dogs. We got ours from Leader Dogs for the Blind which seems to be a great organization too :)