the way in which we die

hello!

note to self: must stop spending all this time on the computer only to turn it off without blogging a single thing. must write on blog first before getting side-tracked by all the great blogs out there, or else this blog will suffer (it already has). okay, here we go...

so my summer job at the hospital finished last week; it was there one day that i saw a dead body. the department where i work is located in the basement. i half-realized the morgue was down there too (i mean, that is where they usually put it), but i never really gave it much thought.

i was walking down the hall to the women's washroom (loo/toilet/restroom, whatever!); at the end of the hall is another hall perpendicular to the first, forming a t-junction of sorts. i had just about reached the door to the loo when right in front of me, at the t-junction, a lady and a man dressed in suits (from the funeral home i was later told) walked by with a gurney carrying its deceased load, underneath a wine-coloured blanket. i must say, the last thing you'd expect to see while on the way to the loo is a dead body but there you go; my heart leaped a little into my throat and i froze for a second, which was all it took for the gurney to whizz by past me.

this job (and this particular experience) made me think about death and dying, and the years right before you reach the end. death was the palliative care ward, death was the casual mention by my colleagues of "so-and-so" dying in this ward or that; death was going on clinical rounds, meeting patients who were in the active process of dying - patients who were bed-bound, requiring g-tubes and total care, non-responsive and cognitively impaired - basically (in my opinion) being kept alive until the mounting physical problems stopped giving way to solutions.

i had discussions with my colleagues about what they thought of death - did it ever affect them when a patient died? how so? how much? - i also asked them if they ever considered their own end-of-life scenario, and how they would like to be treated when the time came. morbid topic of conversation perhaps, but being exposed to the knife's edge of living vs. dying everyday, one does think of these things. it made me realize that sometimes just because we can sustain life doesn't mean we should - i personally would not want tubes stuck in me for years, with all cognitive capabilities having left me, being a burden not only on my family but on the system as well; i believe in quality of life as well as quality of death, and to me that is not dying with dignity. a lot of it has to do with the family's decision on how to best care for their loved one - i can certainly understand the need to try everything possible to keep the one you love alive - but in the end is it more to satisfy your own feelings, or is it actually about doing what's best for the patient? i have seen both sides of the coin.

anyhoo, i hope this post doesn't get you down and if anything, i hope it gives you some food for thought. i read an article today about scientific research into how to live a long life; there was a quote which read "the goal is to live to 90 or 95 and then die in your sleep." compared to what i've seen this summer, that option sounds pretty good.

CET