A hospice nurse has shared what happens to the human body after dying to try and reduce fear of death. Julie McFadden, a registered nurse, used to work in an intensive care unit so ‘saw a lot of death’ throughout her career. While she would speak with colleagues about the likelihood of her patients dying, she was much less likely to have these frank conversations with those patients directly, or their families.
So Julie was inspired to start speaking up and advocating for her patients, and she eventually moved into hospice nursing where she ‘saw the power each body has to die naturally and how beautiful it really was’. She has also written a book and shares videos on her YouTube channel talking about death, dying, and advocating for patients and their families. Her latest video, viewed nearly 600,000 times, explains exactly what happens to the human body after death, to try and demystify the experience.
Immediately after death, the body completely relaxes in the first stage of decomposition. Julie explains: ‘This is why people urinate, have bowel movements, sometimes have fluid come up their nose or out of their eyes or ears, all of the things in your body that are holding fluids in relax. ‘That’s why death can be messy sometimes.
I like to talk about it so people aren’t surprised if that happens. It’s very normal and to be expected sometimes. ‘The second thing that happens is the body temperature drops.
’ Having seen a lot of dead bodies throughout her c.
