How To Get A Head Start On Embalming Grandma (In 5 Easy Steps)
If you have a grandma, she’s not only going to die, she’s going to die relatively soon. You likely won’t make it through college with her. You may as well get a head start on embalming her.
Step One: Tell Your Grandma You’re Going To Embalm Her
Make her think that it’s a cool, fun thing. Don’t let her know that you’ll be replacing her blood with two different kinds of formaldehyde. If you’ve ever meal-prepped, you’re already halfway there.
Step Two: Prepare The Liquids
You’ll need a mite treatment, a professional trocar, an embalming machine, two kinds of formaldehyde, a tick/flea control shampoo, rubber gloves, knowledge of the carotid artery, and some home-building tools. Once you’ve got all that, you’re ready for embalming. You’ll also need a clean table with a reservoir or a collection of towels to catch any spilled fluids.
Step Three: Wait
Unfortunately, death takes time.
Step Four: Make Sure She Hasn’t Gained Any Weight When She’s Dead
You’ll need to know how heavy your grandma’s organs are so you know how much fluid to use, but don’t bother weighing her while she’s still alive. She could gain or lose any number of pounds between now and then. Go to the morgue, where they’ve kept your dead grandma for a few days or weeks, and look at the tag on her foot. It should tell you her weight and birthday, and thus, how much of various kinds of liquids to use. Look around the lab for those if you don’t have them at home.
Step Five: Embalm That Grandma
Place your grandmother on an embalming table. Make sure to “set” their “features” — like their facial expressions, paper-thin hands, and translucent fingers — into some kind of human shape. Try a thumbs-up or some horns. Whatever you think Grandma would want.
Pull up the subclavian/carotid artery. This means you have to cut open the body, find the artery, and make it safe to inject formaldehyde into her veins. It’s okay, the artery is really really big. Next, you’re gonna go ahead and inject the embalming fluid into her artery hard and drain goo from the vein on her other arm so that you don’t explode her, forcing the blood out of her body forever. Next, you have to use a trocar — a long, pointed needle with a hydro-respirator attached — and plunge it into her bloated tummy. Then just steep the body in a highly concentrated formaldehyde solution, and you’re all done! For posterity, wash the body as if it were a real person.
Now you know how to get a head start on embalming your grandma, even if (especially if) she’s not dead yet. Have fun!
I am a veterinarian.
Image: Unsplash, Unsplash, Unsplash
