We're here at Korsmo Funeral Service.

Come on in.

[classical music]

We've been given unprecedented access

to the whole funeral home.

We're gonna go into the prep room

where we embalm and prepare bodies.

Normally, if a person from the outside,

like yourself wanted to go into the prep room,

they wouldn't be allowed.

We've been given special access today

from the Department of Health.

And we're going to look at caskets,

urns, that kind of stuff.

We're gonna get to see the funeral chapel,

and then we'll also get to take a tour of the hearse.

See how that works.

With us today is Shawn.

- Victor.

- Thanks for having me here.

I really appreciate it. - Thanks for being here.

Death can be kind of scary.

There's a lot of things about our field that are unknown.

I'm excited for you

to bring those answers to everyone today.

- First, we're gonna go inside the prep room.

Why don't you come with me,

and I'll show you what we do.

[classical music]

So here we are in the prep room,

the room where we do all the embalming.

Embalming is meant to sanitize and preserve bodies,

as well as provide some level of restoration.

So, for instance, if someone is grievously injured,

we can kind of work to reconstruct them

in addition to making sure that their body holds up

for maybe the week that we have

in between the time when they die

and the time when we have the funeral.

In this funeral home, the prep room is off of the garage.

I don't want to be bringing cots

with bodies on them up or downstairs

or through the whole funeral home to get them here,

because then we can go right from the van

to the room where the magic happens.

[bouncy music]

We've taken our dummy Mike from the back of the van

and now we are ready for the embalming.

Every time you prepare a body, you kind of start from zero.

So you're going to do inventory,

you're gonna look them over, you're gonna make sure

that you know everything about their condition

and then adjust your embalming processes accordingly.

In a normal situation, I'm covered from head to toe

with personal protective equipment,

and that's mainly to keep me safe

when I'm dealing with blood and pathogens.

I'm also dealing with embalming fluids,

so these are things

that keep bodies preserved and sanitized.

And a lot of these contain aldehydes.

These are actually toxic chemicals.

Every prep room is going to have ventilation,

it's going to have formaldehyde level monitoring.

All these things are in place to keep me safe

and to make sure that we don't infect our public spaces

with what we have to do here in private.

[gentle music]

One of the first steps of embalming is setting the features.

So making the face into a natural expression.

These are called eye caps.

Sometimes when people die, their eyes are open,

and we can position the eyelids and have them stay that way.

We use this device called a needle injector

that actually punches these sharp brads

into the upper and lower jaw, kind of keep it in place

so they'll stay that way.

The next part of embalming after we set those features

is we're going to do what's called arterial embalming.

So we're gonna gain access to the arteries,

and then that's how we're going

to use our embalming machine to pump fluids in.

[bouncy music]

So there are three different kinds of fluids

that embalmers use when preparing a body.

The first, arterial solutions, are going to be fixatives.

So they're going to sanitize the body,

they're gonna preserve it,

and they're going to fix it into place.

Other fluids are what we call co-injection,

or accessory fluids.

Co-injections might add fluid to tissue,

they might draw fluid out, they'll add color.

Sometimes maybe a rosiness is helpful.

And then we have other fluids that are really good

at preventing certain types of decomposition.

Probably the most common place for a funeral director

to gain access to an artery is right up here in the neck,

and that is called the carotid artery.

Let's say you choose not to raise the carotid artery,

you can actually embalm a whole body

right here from the leg.

So the femoral artery is one

of the largest arteries that we have access to.

If you push fluid up, you can open the corresponding vein,

and then the blood will drain out.

And arteries are interesting

because they're very rubbery.

Think like a tube rubber band.

And so when we put high pressure into them

with the embalming machine, they're able to withstand that.

The fluid just goes right into the body.

[gentle music]

So this tank here is the embalming machine,

and this tube goes right down the artery,

and then is gonna shoot fluid in at a high pressure

in order to circulate that fluid through

while pushing out the blood

that's been pulling in the venous system.

So this will actually simulate something of a heartbeat.

So if you have large clots

that are stuck in a venous system,

you can pulse the fluid through at a high pressure

and push those clots out of the body,

and that'll create better distribution for our fluid

and better preservation in that final procedure.

[piano music]

This one is called a tissue spreader.

So let's say you have someone with a little extra weight,

and you need to get into, let's say,

the meat of their leg to gain access to their artery.

This guy, you can put in like this,

and it spreads out all that fat.

Any number of handy scissors,

a curve is nice sometimes, especially as you're cutting

through arteries or maybe other tissue.

This is called an aneurysm hook

because it's used for separating tissue

and hooking the arteries and pulling them out

where you have access to them.

This is called a grooved director.

I can hold this, put it into the artery,

and then this hard surface in the bottom

is gonna open up the artery

so I can slide my other tools right in.

An angular forceps.

This you can actually use to pull out clots.

This guy is called a drain tube.

Typically, this end here is going to be hooked up

to another tube that we run down the table,

and then this end is going to go inside the artery.

One thing that's great about a drain tube is

that we can actually control how much blood leaves the body.

If we're having drainage issues, you can stop it.

Pressure is building in the body,

and then all of a sudden you'll pull the end,

and whoop, it'll come pouring out the bottom.

So you want to create that pressure

because sometimes you need a little extra

to get into the extremities,

like into the toes or the fingers, something like that.

Cavity embalming is the second part

of preparing a body in which we want

to puncture all the hollow organs

and then drain out all the goo and nastiness

that wants to live in there.

So the tool we're going

to use to do that is called the trocar.

The trocar is a great, big steel spear.

This tip is going to puncture the organ,

and then this part is actually hooked up to a vacuum,

so it's going to [Victor slurps]

suck all that goo right down the drain.