That was my Mom’s story. The first time happened at the office. She was standing there talking to somebody and the next thing she knew a paramedic was kneeling over her with oxygen, defib machine, etc.
The second time it happened she was alone. Presumably she didn’t feel anything that time either.
That’s now my preferred exit strategy too.
I hear a lot of people talking about someone who “died in their sleep”. About all we can really say after the fact is that they died in bed because that’s where we found the body.
Were they asleep? Or did they waken and lie there in pain & fear for a few seconds or minutes wondering what the heck was going on? Hard to say, I’d say.
There have been medical experiments to study the effects of drowning; years ago I read an article written by a volunteer who participated in one. They strapped him into a harness attached to a pole and lowered him into the water. Both fresh and salt, since that was one of the things they were studying.
I’ve long been amazed at the things scientists can get people to volunteer for.
Yes this … I have had the kidney disease part for 4 years and I can promis the last two have been pretty miserable. Now I’m at stage five and chose not to have dialysis. Hopefully one day I will get to that last 24 hours
Lots of times, it’s witnessed. Many people (not enough, but many) die in their sleep while someone is sitting there holding their hand. Often on monitors that tell us their heart rate, blood pressure, brain waves…common signs that help us to notice when people are in pain when they can’t tell us. So yes, at least some people who die in their sleep seem to do so painlessly.
Oh, that sucks. I’m truly sorry to hear that. I’ve often looked at my patients who do dialysis and thought, “oh, hell no. I ain’t gonna do that if it’s me.”
On the other hand, have you explored home dialysis options? It’s much much better, less life impairing and has better outcomes in terms of both subjective and objective measures like quality of life and duration of disability free years. Yet somehow doctors hardly ever bring it up as an option. If you’ve already explored it and refused it, I apologize for bringing it up. But on the chance that your nephrologist, like too many of them, told you it was outpatient or nothing, I’d encourage you to get a second opinion. I only have a couple of patients on home dialysis, but they all LOVE it compared to outpatient, and they’re much healthier, especially on Mondays (because they haven’t had to go two days without treatment.)
A friend of mine was an emergency room doctor and he said this was a good way. You generally just go to sleep and then die. In fact he called it the old man’s friend.
I wish this had been true for my grandfather. He had pneumonia and spent his last 4 weeks gasping for breath. Gasping loudly as if he was struggling for his life (which he was, and failing). Had things been up to me I’d have treated it with a snug pillow. But it wasn’t, and we watched him in apparent agony for 4 weeks before he died. There’s nobody more selfish than we, the living.
In its last stages, maybe. But the first stages must feel wretched. Imagine, for instance, wearing a T-shirt and shorts in below-freezing temperatures with howling winds. That sensation.
A year or so ago, I was reading a similar thread in another forum. A young woman posted to say that she had drowned once, and lost consciousness, and was rescued and resuscitated. She said “It wasn’t so bad”, but did not elaborate.
There would be at least two separate concerns involved for reducing the displeasure of dying. One would be the physical pain, which is an evolved response telling you that your body is malfunctining and you had better pay attention in order to survive. The other, since we are intelligent rational beings, is the conscious awareness that we are going to die, with all the anxiety that that entails. Much of that rests with the terrible expectation that something really unpleasant is going to happen before things get better.
There is an old seafaring adage, that sailors and fishermen never learn to swim – it takes too long to die.
I’ve heard the quick deaths are easier on the dying and harder on family/friends, while the slow deaths are harder for the dying but easier on family/friends.