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Richard
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quote:
gavinzmick schreef:
Can anyone tell me, How to reduce the cost of funeral? When funerals so expensive.
Depends on what you call a funeral. Can you explain the services you would like please and your expectations.
Richard |
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Fri Jun 05, 2009 7:30 am |
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andi03
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quote:
gavinzmick schreef:
Can anyone tell me, How to reduce the cost of funeral? When funerals so expensive.
Depends, there are a lot of factors...
Cremation generally brings down the cost.
If you don't embalm, it brings down the cost.
One day of visitation rather than two.
Rent a casket, you will have to buy the liners though, but will have to embalm if go this route.
Just a few.... |
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Fri Jun 05, 2009 7:37 am |
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Richard
F L I N T O I D
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quote:
andi03 schreef:
quote:
gavinzmick schreef:
Can anyone tell me, How to reduce the cost of funeral? When funerals so expensive.
Depends, there are a lot of factors...
Cremation generally brings down the cost.
If you don't embalm, it brings down the cost.
One day of visitation rather than two.
Rent a casket, you will have to buy the liners though, but will have to embalm if go this route.
Just a few....
Exactly true, "It depends". I admit funerals today are high based on traditions and cemetery costs. One can spend upwards of 10 grand for a typical funeral including cemetery costs. So, think about what you would like to do then go from there.
Richard |
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Fri Jun 05, 2009 8:01 am |
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andi03
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Thank you for your condolences, I didn't read it until yesterday. 
Yeah, Dad's was 8275.00 that was paid for out of life insurance.
We could have saved even more money but we had to have 2 visitation days....50 first cousins and all....big family.
Funerals can be completed in a "classy" manner, frugally. |
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Fri Jun 05, 2009 8:13 am |
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Adam
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Jackson's hospital is known for 'raising the dead'
When Michael Jackson went into cardiac arrest, rescuers took him to a place known for bringing the dead back to life. A world-renowned surgeon at the UCLA Medical Center has pioneered a way to revive people that most doctors would have long written off, including a woman whose heart had stopped for 2 1/2 hours.
Tested on a few dozen cardiac arrest patients, 80 percent survived. Usually, more than 80 percent perish.
"They took people who were basically dead, not all that different than Michael Jackson, and saved most of them," said Dr. Lance Becker, an emergency medicine specialist at the University of Pennsylvania and an American Heart Association spokesman.
Could Jackson, too, have been saved?
It's impossible to know. Doctors at the hospital worked on him for an hour. The UCLA expert, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Gerald Buckberg, said he was not personally involved in Jackson's treatment, and that too little is known about what preceded it.
"We have no idea when he died versus when he was found," Buckberg said in a telephone interview.
However, the results in other patients show that "the window is wide open to new thinking" about how long people can be successfully resuscitated after their hearts quit beating, Buckberg said. "We can salvage them way beyond the current time frames that are used. We've changed the concept of when the heart is dead permanently."
They call it "the Lazarus syndrome" for the man the Bible says Jesus raised from the dead.
Let's be clear: No one is saying that people long dead without medical attention can be revived. The lucky ones in Buckberg's study received quick help, and the reason they suffered cardiac arrest was known and could be fixed: blocked arteries causing a heart attack, in most cases.
Buckberg's method requires:
_Prompt CPR — rhythmic chest compressions — to maintain blood pressure until the patient gets to a hospital.
_Use of a heart-lung machine to keep blood and oxygen moving through the body while doctors remedy what caused the heart to quiver or stop in the first place, such as a drug overdose or a clogged artery.
_Special procedures and medicines to gradually restore blood and oxygen flow, so a sudden gush does not cause fresh damage.
Without all three elements, patients might suffer brain damage if they survive at all.
"You can save the heart and lose the brain," Buckberg explained.
UCLA and hospitals in Birmingham, Ala.; Ann Arbor, Mich.; and in Germany tested Buckberg's method on 34 patients who had been in cardiac arrest for an average of 72 minutes. All had failed resuscitation methods with standard CPR and defibrillation to try to shock their hearts back to beating.
Only seven died. Only two survivors were left with permanent neurological damage. Results were published in 2006 in the journal Resuscitation.
Dr. Constantine Athanasuleas (pronounced uh-than-uh-SOO'-lee-us), a surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, treated one man in the study who had been in cardiac arrest for about an hour and a half. The man's wife, a nurse, did CPR until a helicopter brought him to the hospital.
"He was flatlined," with a heart "as still as your dining room table," Athanasuleas said.
Doctors put him on a heart-lung machine, whisked him to the catheterization lab to see if he had artery blockages, then did bypass surgery to detour around them.
"The guy went home and was neurologically perfect" at least two years later, the doctor said.
Buckberg treated a woman who had been in cardiac arrest for 2 1/2 hours.
He would not send her to the operating room until her CPR and blood pressure could be maintained so further treatment could be attempted, he said.
Sadly, the woman survived all this but died several weeks later from an infection.
Buckberg has taken his work further in experiments with pigs in cardiac arrest. He deliberately deprived their brains of blood flow for half an hour, then used his resuscitation techniques to bring them back, with normal or near-normal function. Results presented at a heart association conference last fall stunned many, including Dr. Myron Weisfeldt, a cardiologist and chairman of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
"He's doing extraordinary things. You almost don't believe the results that he got," Weisfeldt said of Buckberg. "Most of us carry around in our head that if somebody's brain is deprived of blood flow for 10 to 15 minutes that we're just not going to get them back to any useful function. His data suggest it's possible."
Doctors in Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere in Asia have tried approaches similar to Buckberg's with excellent results, said Becker, who is about to try it in Philadelphia.
"It takes training. It takes rethinking" to get doctors to adopt something this new, and funding for bigger studies to prove it works, Buckberg said. |
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Wed Jul 01, 2009 10:04 pm |
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Adam
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Some might let you save money by
digging the grave
yourself.
BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - After cancer took the life of a 15-year-old boy, his family dug the teen's grave themselves to save on funeral costs and also received assistance from complete strangers to give him a proper burial.
Melvin Critney lost his battle with cancer last week. His father, Melvin Stewart, said his son was sent into the world with a mission, which he did well. He said Melvin left an impression on everyone he came across. Even Melvin's nurses said he had a special kind of energy. They said he was always grateful and grown-up. His mother, Rosland Critney, said most of all he wanted to see his parents not have to work so hard to live like other people.
Melvin's parents said they make just enough money to get by. When their son had to undergo several rounds of chemo therapy, they relied on St. Jude for funding. However, when Melvin died, his parents were on their own to pay for the funeral. Stewart said everything was about the money. A local funeral director told the family it would cost $5,000 to bury their son. Funeral Director Hall Davis, IV told them they could save $300 if they dug their own grave. He said it is a common practice.
Melvin's father, cousin, and two uncles started digging. Stewart said digging the hole he knew his son was going to be placed in as his final resting place was not a pretty picture. Even after digging into the depths of despair, this family still owed the funeral director more money. Davis said the funeral home always gets paid in full before the funeral.
The Louisiana State Troopers Association heard about this family's fight and felt compelled to help. Sgt. Mary Beth Stupka said the association had never stepped in to help a family with funeral arrangements prior to this situation. The resources were pooled to pay the remaining costs. Help arrived from people the family never knew, but they're certain their son had a hand in it.
Melvin's family did not have insurance for funeral expenses. Local funeral directors say that's a common cause of concern for many struggling families.
If you'd like to donate to the Louisiana State Troopers Association, the group who helped this family with funeral costs, you can visit their website and click on "donate":
http://www.latroopers.org/modules/content/index.php?id=19 |
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Wed Aug 05, 2009 8:49 am |
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Richard
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Can I say this, "Why would you expect the funeral home to not get paid for their services?" Every business in business needs to stay solvent in order to stay in business. I'm sure the medical field got paid so why not the funeral director.
As a funeral director I take offense to the public making the funeral home out as the bad guys because someone died, has no money, and the money grubbing funeral home needs payment. A very tragic story but it was not the fault of the funeral home that this happened. |
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Wed Aug 05, 2009 9:23 am |
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