[extropy-chat] New York Times article on dying

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

This New York Times article details the process of dying and what happens to
the body and mind as a person dies. As deaths from heart attacks decline and
life expectancy rises, death has become a protracted process for more and
more people. Accompanying this trend is a growing need for medical
professionals and families to understand what happens during the last weeks,
days and hours of life and what kind of action, or inaction, is most likely
to bring a comfortable, peaceful, even beautiful end.
Active dying, the process of total body system failure, usually occurs over
a period of 10 to 14 days, although it can take as little as 24 hours. As
someone nears the end of life, it is not unusual to turn inward and become
less communicative, even as much as three months before death. Loved ones
should not confuse this withdrawal with rejection. Rather, she said, it
reflects the dying person's need to leave the outer world behind and focus
on inner contemplation. Dying patients may also moan or grunt as they
breathe, but rarely is this a sign of pain, she noted. Appropriate pain
relief should always be provided because a patient in pain cannot
communicate effectively or die peacefully. There is no evidence that
pain-relieving drugs hastened death.
This is a very interesting article, the one thing I do not like is the
original title: "Facing Up to the Inevitable, in Search of a Good Death". I
do not think it will stay inevitable for long: there are indications that
someday science will be able to avoid ageing and death.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20031230/7c0c85a9/attachment.html>