Licensed mortician and tissue harvester extraordinaire
 

Question 1. What do you do (hobbies, job)?

I'm a Boring Married Person and homeowner in a quiet suburban neighborhood. You could call me an ordinary girl with an extraordinary occupation: I cut up dead people. I remove the bones, skin, tendons, veins, and heart valves from deceased donors for transplant into the living. It's quite amazing.
I am also a licensed mortician in my state. My first apartment ever was above the funeral home where I served an apprenticeship.
I'm currently trying to get into grad school in order to become a pathologists' assistant (aka do autopsies, etc).

I would describe myself as cheerful goofball, rabidly inquisitive, conservative nature lover, aspiring lepidopterist, offbeat Chrisitian, and pathology junkie.
I enjoy dressing up, making art, and meeting others. I appreciate others' art, music, and literature, including but not limited to those typical gothy authors and artists that practically everyone else here will have already listed.

2. Where are you from?
Maryland, lived in PA for a bit

3. Who is your favorite author?
many
4. What are your favorite films?
many
5. What music do you want played at your wedding?
Pachabel's Canon in D, and it was
6. At your funeral?
Canon in D
7. This IS a gothic website, so... how do you want to die?
Quickly and violently
8. What kind of casket would you want?
The Abbey Casket, made by the Benedictine monks of Saint Meinrad Archabbey. If you need assistance picking out yours I would be happy to help...
9. What's your FAVORITE outfit?
many
10. What's one thing you miss about being a little kid?
being able to ask lots of questions and not have people wonder why
11. What's your favorite band?
many
12. What kind of education do you have? What is/was/will be your major?
bachelors in psychology, associates in mortuary science, future master's in Pathology
13. Why did you join?
Boredom, I've known about this place for years but never got around to it.
14. If the first 13 questions didn't give it away. What is your gender?
Lady

Hmm...I was thinking of attending mortuary school...

You seem like a very intriguing lady! Welcome indeed!

Welcome! Tell me, out of curiosity, what made you want to become a mortician?

You seem like an interesting type, though 'many' doesn't give us much impression of what kinds of thing you're into.
I imagine that your job must be quite entertaining sometimes, the meticulous hand and attention to detail it requires would be useful in your art. Do you have any links to works (art) you've produced? The aesthete in me is hungry.

I prefer not to be defined by the things I enjoy and have a wide variety of tastes so I dislike making lists.

I like just about every kind of music. Genre wise I prefer gothic(yes, you snobs I like Bauhaus)/industrial/horror punk/psychobilly/classical music/metal/techno/and even a bit of trendy mainstream crap now and again

Books-high fantasy, cheesy vampire novels, and factual information regarding pathology & dead people . One title I would recommend for those interested in what happens after death is Stiff:The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach.

Films-Horror, fantasy, and guess what? Comedy. I like to laugh. I'm definetly one for gallows humor.As far as TV shows go, Dead Like Me and Dr. G Medical Examiner. I don't watch much else.

Outfits-I've got a lot of clothes. I have this one lovely black velvet bustier top but it seems to have gone missing and makes me quite sad.
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I do have a bit of art...but my board status doesn't currently allow linking.

Mainly curiosity. My father also died a few years back and I felt I could help people with their losses since I had suffered one.

My husband is also a mortician.

Why thank you dear!

Definetly make sure you get a bachelor's degree(most places are only an associates for mortuary but there are a few that offer bachelor's) that way if you decide you don't like the field you still have a degree that can be useful elsewhere.
If you decide to go to mortuary school make sure you know what you are getting into. I found out the hard way that it wasn't just about dead people. Funerals are for the living and as a mortician you have to deal with live people moreso than the dead.
Turns out I'm more interested in the dead(in an anatomical scientific sort of way) so it didn't work out so well.

Hmm, I wonder does gnet have an official mortician? Could you provide some info on how your work goes (ie: do you and your husband run your own funeral home or work for another one, do you have a website, do you deal with coffin sales and how much do you sell them for). Heh sorry if I'm a bit intrusive I've had few chances to get questions answered and a long running curiosity on the subject ever since I was a little kid at my grandmother's funeral in a side room after I had discovered a fridge full of orange soda (my favorite at the time), I never did find out why it was there and if it was ok for me to drink it (though I drank it anyways and I doubt people would get angry at a 6 year old for doing so), among other things. Welcome

OOOh! I like you!

Welcome to the boards. I too like you very much already. I hope you find that top; it sounds quite lovely.

I'm sure that was what the orange soda was for :)

My husband works for a funeral home and I no longer work in the funeral industry. When I did, the place I worked at was 50 miles away from his. Now I just have a fancy piece of paper that says I'm allowed to embalm people and make funeral arrangements if I wanted to.

I used to want to own a funeral home, but quickly became disenchanted with the whole idea. It takes a huge amount of money to start a funeral home and an insane amount of work (16 hours days, dealing with upset people, going out at all hours of the night to pick up bodies etc)

We don't sell caskets or coffins ourselves. The funeral homes we work(ed) for have selection rooms for those. When people come in to make arrangements they pick one out. They also can pick out flowers, register books, prayer cards, etc. The prices of a casket (in the United States) range from around $500 (for a plain wooden cremation box) to $35,000 for a bronze full couch(this also can vary depending on where you purchase them). The average casket seems to be around $2K.
Honestly I think most of the caskets that funeral homes in the US sell are pretty boring looking. In Europe, coffins are more prevalent and they are GORGEOUS. I don't know what they go for though.

Anyone COULD sell caskets online, you don't need to be a mortician to do that and there are a lot of discount sites out there (Funeral homes dislike them though).

Hope I've answered some of your questions. Feel free to ask more anytime.

I like how you called everyone out on being Bauhaus snobs. Welcome to G-Net.

I'm sorry to do this here, but I have no other way of getting a hold of you.

I have a question, and perhaps you might be able to help me, due to your particular field of work.

Back when AIDS first came out, (more around the time it was known as GRIDS, early 80's) was there a particular way of embalming, or preparing a body for burial? Or was the idea of AIDS still so new and scary that no one wanted to deal with a body? Was it a more common practice to just cremate the remains?

I have been told that when AIDS was first publicized, the funeral community was a bit scared because not much was known about the disease.
I know that funeral services today in the US cannot be denied to a family if someone has a particular disease. Funeral homes were less regulated in the eighties than they are now. I do not know how AIDS cases were handled then but can imagine that cremation might have been encouraged if the person was known to have the disease. Don't take my word for it though.

Now we know that AIDS is very difficult to contract as it cannot live outside the human body. AIDS cases are prepared in the same way as a non-AIDS body would be, using Universal Precautions.

Sorry I don't know more about that subject, we didn't touch on it much in school and it never came up on the job.
Did you have an experience with this?

Well, no. It's a long drawn out story, but my friends and I know of a man who died in the early 80's of AIDS, but no one will talk about where his remains are. Also, the stories contradict themselves. Some say buried, and others say cremated. I would imagine he was cremated. I was thinking no one in the funeral business would wanna deal with it. We wanted to know because my friend is planning on writing a paper on this particular man.

Watch out! You'll be out of work soon, if humans don't slow their breeding rates. Soylent Green is PEOPLE!

Welcome, by the way. You can have my heart, lungs, eyes, pancreas, etc. Take it all, except my liver; you won't want that.

Got the acidosis n' the cirrhosis eh?

Keep in mind that cremated remains can be buried also.
Good luck with your research.

You please me very much, suture-self. Whatever that's worth (not much).

Hey, have you ever sutured yourself? That would be a trip, I bet. Also potentially shock-inducing.

Welcome.

Lol, thank you sweetie.
I have sutured myself, but with sterile suture.