Wednesday, January 29, 2014

A MACABRE SPECULATION ABOUT DEATH


WARNING: This post speculates about the nature of death, and posits that it's painful and terrifying. It's a downright creepy subject, definitely not suitable for anyone who's recently experienced the death of a loved one. Be warned!




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Okay, if you're still here, then I can promise that you'll at least acquire an interesting story to tell around campfires and at Halloween parties. Here goes:



Occasionally you hear families say about a deceased relative: "He died peacefully in his sleep. We can only hope to be as lucky when our time comes." Lucky? How can they be so sure? If the evidence for a peaceful passing was simply the man's relaxed corpse, then maybe they should have withheld their judgement. Who really knows what his mental state was when he died?



What started me thinking about this was a TV documentary about lethal injection. It argued that this might be a more painful method of execution than people think. The show cited a study of brain waves from the lethally injected which indicated brain activity for several minutes after the heart stopped. In view of the pain cited by survivors of heart attack and stroke, it doesn't seem out of line to speculate that these men experienced agony as their body shut down.


You can further speculate that the prisoners were paralyzed by the opiates added to the poison and were unable to show any outward manifestation of that pain. Imagine that...severe pain without even the small comfort of being able to thrash about or scream. A very scary thought! 


It occurred to me that the so-called peaceful deaths of the bed-ridden might occur the same way. Imagine a man in bed, sleeping soundly. Somehow the oxygen to his brain is cut off and he startles to wakefulness. Let me stop here to underline my belief that he wakes up. It's inconceivable that the body would react passively to a trauma like this. He'd wake up in a panic.


Maybe his lungs would still work for a time, but at a fraction of their normal capacity. If you ever choked on water that went down the wrong pipe, you know what it's like to breathe through what feels like a pinhole. Maybe our sleeper would experience this.


Maybe his heart would lose it's rhythm before it stopped beating. That's bound to hurt. The poor victim might try to get out of bed and flail about, but it's more likely that he'd take the avenue of least pain and stay on his back, hoping that the condition would right itself if only he could be still.

As his vessels constricted, his muscles would begin to fail and the victim would lapse into a state of painful paralysis. If he was sitting up before, he'd now fall down on the bed, maybe blind, and with his arms close to his side. His grimacing face would lose it's expressiveness and become neutral.



His mind would be active for some minutes after his body failed, a long time since minutes pass like hours when you're in pain. As the oxygen-deprived brain deteriorates, wild, crazy thoughts might race through his head. Along with the pain might come regret for past misdeeds and worry about family and friends. Maybe he'll think of some vitally important message he wants to convey, but can't. Almost certainly the final thoughts of his crumbling brain would be a scream in Hell... madhouse ravings, with no logic or pattern.

Of course in the morning his relatives will find a relaxed body, peacefully lying on a pillow, and covered with sunlight from a newly opened window.

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I hope I haven't disturbed anybody with this. I'm happy to be able to end on a more cheerful note, thanks to Anonymous (Buzz?) who made the following comment to the original post:




Eddie, "opiates" are pain relievers. They BLOCK pain. They are not in any way "paralyzers" although too much of them can stop breathing function.

I read a fascinating book dealing entirely with the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg-the wounded, dead, the town and how the cleanup was dealt with. The soldiers left in the "hospital"(a tent, makeshift and filthy) who had undergone hacksaw surgeries, missing limbs etc. including one whose wounds were infested with squirming maggots(who wrote this story at the time in a letter), went from screaming to singing merrily when they were given a nice big dose of morphine-the root drug of all "opiates"-laudanum, codeine, etc.!

They were alert but feeling NO pain at all although some had the most painful wounds imaginable short of burns.

There's been a lot of study into this area; basically the brain when it it shutting down for real (or thinks it is, which is often near enough-i.e. when it goes into that shock) goes about the business of blocking andinhibiting pain--releasing large amounts of endorphins There's no evidence at all that an unconscious person experiences terrible pain or any pain at all, as the brain is not conscious. As others pointed out, if it were not so, every operating patient would come out of anesthesia telling blood curdling stories of the pain they experienced. That never happens.




text not in italics copyright Eddie Fitzgerald 9/16/2009


4 comments:

  1. This is a fresh comment, received only a couple of days ago. It was intended to follow the original posting of this blog, which was first published in Sept.. 2009. Anonymous writes:

    Dear Eddie, First let me thank you for this site. In October, I received word that a friend of mine had passed the end of September in a foreign country. Naturally, I contacted the US Embassy/Stat Dept. They confirmed the death but nothing else. Later, I received an email via a relative of my friend with little more than what I already knew. The email, via a live in partner, stated that My Friend died 'peacefully in his sleep at 2am.' I have trouble with peacefully and an exact time of 2am. What was the roommate doing? My friend used a c-pap machine for breathing. Several years earlier he had a heart attack while we were walking to a restaurant in the neighborhood with a friend. We had enough time to fetch her car, drive to a clinic, and then he was transported via ambulance .to a hospital under and hour away. (not instant death like in the movies)The roommate is a nurse.(training??level??) The State Dept. takes charge and automatically does an autopsy and confiscates your stuff. However, getting your hands on police reports,911(?) info., ambulance reports, autopsy report is next to impossible...even with the help of your Senator. You are free to ask all the questions you wish but, they might go unanswered. I have been with people who have died. None of them died 'peacefully'. The only people I can think of who might appear to die peacefully would be someone who bled to death because they would be in a coma due to loss of blood.
    I would love feedback on my dilemma. You can probably see why I am stuck here. thanks in advance for your thoughts and insights.

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  2. I never saw this post but wow, that is really deep and made me think a lot more about the subject. I hear a lot about infamous cases where people who have committed horrific crimes were put to death via lethal injection and seeing relatives of the victims say that they should have gotten a much more painful punishment to match the suffering that they inflicted on their loved ones.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I never saw this post but wow, that is really deep and made me think a lot more about the subject. I hear a lot about infamous cases where people who have committed horrific crimes were put to death via lethal injection and seeing relatives of the victims say that they should have gotten a much more painful punishment to match the suffering that they inflicted on their loved ones.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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