2 disc and 2 replies due in 16 hours

Human Anatomy II 

Forum Week Seven:

As a new embalmer/student there may be times you are left alone for a few minutes to raise vessels in the deceased. As you begin you feel excitement and determination to show your amazing skills off, you raise the vessels on the right size and as you locate the structures you begin to pull them up one by one and tie them off. First I want you to discuss what you will find and what level each structure is located. Second, I want you to explain what you will do if you raise the vein and it "snaps" before you can tie it off. Please be as descriptive as you can and what process you would take. Make sure you comment on two other students post giving them better recommendations or guidance on their suggestions.

Students: Please answer the question first and then respond to one of your fellow classmates with a substantive response.

"Substantive" means responding with one or more complete sentences that engages content. Simply responding with something like "Welcome!", "Good to meet you!", "What a nice day!" or "Look, a squirrel!" would not be acceptable responses.

Initial Post: 250 words Follow-up Post: 150 words

HALEY’S POST:

Raising vessels, along with many other embalmers and starters, is one of the things I struggle with the most. My supervisor has been in the industry for 30 plus years and he still struggles to locate the veins and arteries at times. You can get them confused with ligaments. muscles and other tissues in the body that can resemble veins and arteries. The most common vessels used are the carotid artery and the right jugular vein. Both of these are located on the right side of the decedent under the collarbone. To create an incision, I like to gently pull the skin upwards towards the head so that when I am done, the sewed up incision is less obvious and noticeable. While making the incision, you need to cut through the dermis and epidermis to cut through, as well as fatty tissue that is yellow in color. You want to move and tear muscles that are in the way; veins and arteries are usually deeper than muscles. Once you locate both or one, you need to carefully find a way to separate and clean it off so that you have a clear view and room to work with it/them.

Working carefully with these two structures is important so you don't break them before use. If you snap a vein, it is not the end of the world because you will still have drainage, as the vein is broken at some point, it may just not be as good of a drainage as you would have with it properly tired off and a drainage tube inserted. If you were to break an artery, that would be another story. You would need to locate another injection site, make an incision and find the vessel and embalm from there.

Restorative Art I

Week 7 Discussion Forum

You get a case into your funeral home of a dirt bike rider that swerved to miss a deer that ran across the road and wiped out. They did not have a helmet on and got road rash on the left side of their face. This was so bad that it tore all the muscles up and got into the bone. The family really wants to view them.... What muscles will you need to restore and how would you handle this case?

You must respond to 1 other student. 250 words or more.

CHAD’S POST:

I'm going to suspect the frontalis, orbicularis oculi, nasalis, levator labii alaeque nasi, levator labii superioris, zygomatic major and minor, buccinator, masseter, mentalis, depressor anguli oris, levator anguli oris, corrugator, and levator palpebrae will be the muscles in need of repair and restoration. This sounds like a case in which I would try to persuade the family to not view the remains, yet if they insist, then I would have them sign whatever waiver is appropriate after suggesting that we only view the side of the face that is without the trauma. I'm just kind of shooting from the hip here, but maybe I could put some drying agent on the trauma to sit perhaps overnight. Then I might try to put some plastic over it and then place a clean sheet over that. This would conceal the side of the face that is unviewable while allowing the family to view the side that is viewable. If this is even a possibility, then I would do the best I could to have the good side clean and well groomed. 

Now with all that said, I suspect that there are directors out there who specialize in these types of cases. And they would probably reassemble the muscles in the correct positions, and then replace any skin that is not destroyed to it original position. I'm guess that after embalming, there's probably some kind of wax that they would then use to fill in the gaps and depressions in hopes of smoothing out the contours of the face. Then finally, I imagine they would apply some cosmetics that would hopefully restore his color to something close to normal.