My mother is now in cryostasis
I hope this post will help to those who think about cryonics.
My mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer on 1 Jules 2010.
It was on terminal stage and she died 24 September 2010.
Before, in March she publically said that she is against cryonics on the party at her home.
But several weeks after she learned about cancer I asked her again. I told her that only her brain will be cryonised. But head and body will be buried by Christian ritual.
To my surprise she agreed. She said that she do it because she knows that it is important to me, and also she thought that “studying her brain will help science”.
I ask her to write special will about funeral in free form. The exact text of needed will I got from Cryorus, the only available cryonic company in Moscow.
After it I go to Cryorus and signed two contracts for me and for her.
We reach agreement that I will make payment in the moment of cryopreservation.
She was prominent scientist in the field of art history and deputy director of Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow.
http://bit.ly/gsa5mq - wiki
So we need to keep the fact or cryopreservation in secret, and I ask the readers of this text not to mention about it in Russian.
23 September she was in hospital and her condition was unstable, but even though the call from hospital in 1.50 AM was unexpected. She died from heart failure. She was fully consciences until last day and didn’t have much pain.
I already have instructed stuff in the hospital that they should call me immediately if she dies, and should put cold wet blanket on her head.
But Russian laws are not well for cryonist: you can’t get full accesses to the body until all documents are prepared in the office of state agency – which is opened only in day time!
I took a car and rush to the hospital together with Danila Medvedev, head of Cryorus and russian transhumanist. We took the body to the cold room with near zero © temperature in morgue, put on it wet blankets, and leave until morning.
The next day I have to do a trick – to cryopreserved my mother and ensure that nobody of her friends will know about it.
This is the main important point of story, because here is the difference about what I expected I will feel, and what actually I felt.
I felt that they could stop me somehow, if they learn that cryopreservation is in progress, because they think that it is against Christian laws, it is mutilation of her body and is against her will after all - they remembered that she publically told that she don’t want cryopreservation.
It was a lot of problems with papers in the hospital, and a transportation car was lost in traffic jams until 2 PM.
Her body had to be transported out of Moscow to another hospital where cryopreservation will start. It taked several hours in traffic jams. During this time we find some ice and also I bought freezed vegetables for her head.
I called her friends and her husband and told everything except that I took the body from the hospital.
In morgue of the second hospital also arrived American cryonist Saul Kent who was visiting Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Kent
The stuff quickly take the brain out and start cooling it. They put scull back on place so nobody will see that the brain is removed.
Three day later she got public service in the museum and in the church, and nobody knows that she is not here. Her body was then cremated and the urn was put in family cemetery. I told to several close friends that I move her body to another hospital morgue because “funeral there is cheaper” (it is true).
So, did it help my grave? No. But I think that I did right thing.
I understand that most likely cells of her brain have died, but connectom should preserved for the future scanning. I estimate the total chances of her resurrection in 5 per cent.
Edited by turchin, 08 January 2011 - 08:44 PM.
