Open casket funerals for bodies with visible severe head trauma are a viable option for families if embalmers are willing to learn the necessary skills, an professional embalmer said April 10 in Nail Technical Center.
About 50 mortuary science students and mortuary professionals from around the country watched as Vernie Fountain, president of the Fountain National Academy of Professional Embalming Skills, showed photography of his work in a two-day seminar sponsored by the National Funeral Directors Association.
Participants gasped not at the graphic photos of the deceased with severe head trauma but at the photos showing the restoration to their appearance in life as a result of Fountain's work.
"There's nothing magical in any of this," Fountain said. "You have the skill. You just need the road map."
Fountain's road map begins with a three-step technique of reducing the body's facial swelling.
The first technique, using chemicals to reduce the swelling of the body, is part of the initial embalming process of displacing the blood and fluids and replacing it with embalming solution.
The solution is made of as little as 1 percent of diluted formaldehyde and chemicals that alter the body's protein to make it less receptive to water, preventing the acceleration of decomposition.
Mortuary science Professor Felix Gonzales said in an interview April 4 that chemicals used during the embalming process vary from body to body.
"Death doesn't cure people of their illness or disease," Gonzales said. "If you're a diabetic in life, you're a diabetic in death."
"Those problems that bodies experience, that were treated by doctors, now can effect the embalming treatment."
Gonzales also said that embalming is not a matter of using one approach for all deceased people.
"Let's say a doctor is going to treat 'x' number of appendectomies in one week. There's going to be similarities for all of those procedures, but each patient has their own unique pre-existing conditions," Gonzales said.
Gonzales said that because of limited access to the person's medical history and, at times not knowing the cause of death, embalmers have to be able to simply look at a person and determine what chemicals to use.
"There are chemicals that are used to make shriveled skin to appear fuller," Gonzales said. "Another chemical can treat a body that has been frozen, while another replaces color into the skin to appear more natural as a body's skin will turn pale due to blood drainage."
Fountain barely touched upon the first technique of chemical usage in his seminar to explain in more depth the second technique of channeling or waxing.
Those attending the seminar watched as Fountain cut a diamond shaped hole into the skin of a cadaver that was donated to science.
This recreation of a wound allowed Fountain to show the participants in the lab and on screen in the overflow room next door, how to slice lacerated edges, remove access tissue and glue the skin to the bone.
Time ran out before he had time to show the next process of pouring wax into the open wound to fill the gap.
He would continue the process on the next day of the seminar, he said, along with the skills of using cosmetics to make the wax match the shade of the skin.
Earlier in the slide show portion of the seminar, Fountain explained that the third technique is used in severe cases of head trauma where surgery is the final option.
Those pictures showed faces surgically cut open to reveal a mess of damaged bone and flesh, which Fountain had to reconstruct to make the final appearance "not necessarily perfect, but acceptable and identifiable" for the viewing.
"When rebuilding the bone, first identify a known construction," Fountain said. "Build from the known to the unknown."
Fountain recalled a case in which he was well into the surgery when he had doubts about being able to find the bone structure within the wounds and feared that he might have been mistaken in trying to make this an open casket funeral.
"I had to take a break and go outside to collect my thoughts for a few minutes," Fountain said. "When I got back, I was able to work from the known to the unknown and find the bone structure that was missing to reconstruct it."
For more than 25 years, Fountain has been a licensed embalmer specializing in post mortem reconstructive surgery.
In 1990, he founded the Fountain National Academy of Professional Embalming Skills, whose mission is to convert closed casket situations into open casket situations, according the Web site at http://www.fnacademy.com.
"He likes to make non-viewable conditions viewable," said Faye Bonini, professional development coordinator of NFDA. "Family members don't want their loved ones buried appearing the way they died. They want to remember them how they appeared when they were living."
Fountain hopes that his seminars educate the public on what embalmers can do and how embalmers give closure to families of the deceased.
"I've had instances where family members came up to hug me and cry on my shoulder because of the joy that their lasting image of their loved one was not a gunshot wound," Fountain said.
"The importance of deciding, as an embalmer, if a case should be a closed casket or an open one makes a huge difference in the happiness of the family."
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