‘I’m a nurse and there is one grim, messy factor that occurs to us after we die’

A hospice nurse has revealed a rather gory detail about what happens after death, and it’s bound to get messy.

Julie McFadden, known to her followers on YouTube as “Hospice Nurse Julie”, is on a mission to demystify the dying process. Through her channel, she delves into the nitty-gritty of death and hospice care to tackle the public’s fear of the inevitable.

In one of her latest spooky instalments, this palliative care pro shares a grim reality of our final moments. She’s chatted before about how to die peacefully, but now she’s tackling a subject that’s a bit more, well, icky.

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She said, in her latest video, about the moments after we die: “It (the body) relaxes, like I’ve been saying, hence why people urinate, have bowel movements, sometimes have fluid come up their nose or out of their eyes or nose, ear.”

She doesn’t hold back, explaining the reason behind this bodily betrayal: “I mean all of the things in your body that are holding fluids in relax. That’s why death can be messy sometimes. After someone dies, not always, but sometimes, the body relaxes so much, it releases all of its fluid.”, reports the Mirror.

According to a hospice nurse, rigor mortis, or the stiffening of the body, typically sets in within one to two hours after death, intensifying before easing over the next 24 to 30 hours.

Julie explained that the body undergoes rigor mortis because its metabolism has ceased, preventing it from producing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a nucleotide that fuels cellular energy.

She also noted that a deceased person’s body becomes heavy, making it challenging to clean single-handedly. As such, additional help is often needed to move or wash the body.

Eventually, the tissue relaxes and the stiffness subsides. However, by this point, Julie stated that the body is usually already in the mortuary, awaiting the family’s decision on the type of funeral they wish to arrange.

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