While I was riding in a ambulance to the hospital, I was pretty sure that this was the end of my life. While I was convinced that I was going to die as I was experiencing a major heart attack, I was surprised that there wasn’t really any fear, but a feeling of disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to take my wife to Italy. My feelings really intrigued me, as I thought that fear would be the dominant emotion.
We took a trip to Italy the next year, and then Australia, and then Eastern Europe and then…
My physician tells me that when his patients are approaching death from a distance they have a wide variety of attitudes about it. Some say things like “I don’t want to live with tubes sticking out of me” or “I want to die with dignity” or “I don’t want to be a burden”.
However, when they’re hours or minutes or even seconds away, if they’re conscious, they turn to panic, and plead with him to do anything, anything, please, to keep them alive.
When my mother was sliding into coma, she was utterly clear that she didn’t want food or water that she was no longer willing to take, or possibly capable of, taking. The case worker who came in to confirm said ‘you realize if you don’t you’re dying?’ and got a very firm nod.
If your physician is telling you that absolutely everybody he sees pleads to be kept alive at the last minute, I’m highly dubious about that. I haven’t had it reported by any of my friends who have been at deathbeds, either.
I oversaw a hospice for over a decade, and there was very little last minute begging/pleading/etc. That was in part because we were pretty aggressive making sure that their pain/anxiety/shortness of breath was adequately treated, so suffering was minimized, as was the adrenaline/panic reaction. Most got quieter and quieter, with the hospice volunteers around them (when desired by the patient) and drifted into unconsciousness and death as their organs failed.
Now those are managed deaths, so don’t apply that to other categories. Anyone suffering from severe shortness of breath or severe pain as they expire will panic, if not properly treated. And all too often there’s no time to properly treat them when they are in that state.
Question for you, Qadgop - years ago I fleetingly worked on a medicine that was for use in terminal agitation (I believe it’s called). Can’t remember the name, but it was an injection with (if I recollect correctly) four actives, which included (I think) an opiate analgesic, a sedative and an anxiolytic. Does that ring any bells from your hospice years?
You would assume that in order to get something like that licensed there would have to be studies of its effectiveness, which in turn implies that the developers would have had to have specific “conditions” -(including, in effect, the “dominant emotions” of the OP) that they were trying to address. I suppose it might be a “grandfathered in” medication - but even then there still might be interesting data related to its use.
they’ve been making drug cocktails for centuries. Brompton’s cocktail was a popular mix of cocaine, alcohol, morphine or heroin, thorazine, and chloral hydrate. It was used to ease the pains of the dying.
These days we tend to avoid the cocktail mixes and try to use the right dose of the right opioid or benzodiazepine or antinauseant or appetite stimulant to treat the problem symptoms. They can all be had in readily dissolvable/absorbable tabs or liquid. I don’t really recall using any mixtures.
I think it also depends on how attached you are to life. For a miserable person it may be a strong sense of relief to know you’re dying, for someone with young kids who likes their life it may be terrifying.
Hopefully Napier will clarify - but I think he/she meant that only patients who learned of their impending death hours or minutes beforehand struggled to come to terms with it, and that patients who received a terminal diagnosis weeks or months beforehand generally did not have such distress in their final moments.
I already know for me it’s going to be an overwhelming sense of, “Don’t f*** this up!” Because I’m certain I will manage to f*** up dying and somehow not do it right and end up stuck somewhere in between.
She is out of prison, off parole and there are no more restraining orders against her contacting me. She has not attempted to contact me these 8 years later even though I am still at the same place and have the same phone number. I have had no “unusual” incidents that I could remotely attribute to her being around me. I have no interest in contacting her or knowing how her life is turning out.
OK, I did hear that she is running ads on an escort website. But I have not actually seen one myself.