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Nursing staff talks about many similar situations: the family is at the bedside of a dying woman. They sit there for hours and days, changing so that the dying person would not be alone at the time of death. And then the person who is awake has to go to the toilet, only for a moment, and the sick person dies just then. It’s a hard experience. Loved ones feel cheated.
- The dying person’s family usually remains at his bedside, not wanting him to be alone at the time of death. «They sit there for hours and days, changing so that the dying person would not be alone at the time of death. And here the person awake has to go to the toilet, only for a moment, and the sick person dies just then “, writes Roland Schulz, author of the book” How We Die “
- The author also describes the last moments of life: “Your chin is sagging, you gasp for air, people around you think that this is your last breath. But as a rule, one more thing comes. Or two. You are finally breathing one last time »
- Which moment is the last moment in life from which a person is considered dead. This definition depends on the perspective, explains Schulz
- «The border between life and death can be compared to a mirage: when viewed from a distance, it seems clear and clearly visible, here is life, here death. However, the closer the observer is, the more blurry it »- we read in the book
- You can find more similar stories on the TvoiLokony home page
An excerpt from Roland Schulz’s book “How we die”, which we publish thanks to the courtesy of the Muza Publishing House
Sometimes relatives do not accept it. Your dying has become an important part of their lives. They feared and cried with you, interpreted the doctors’ statements in their own way, bravely endured sorrow and pain. They looked after you, they fed you. They devoted their time and energy. The road was so long that there was even a silent hope on it – and then they would only like to survive your end: to see your death. It’s quite possible you will play a trick on them.
- When does our body begin to die? Much earlier than it may seem
Nursing staff talks about many similar situations: the family is at the bedside of a dying woman. They sit there for hours and days, changing so that the dying person would not be alone at the time of death. And then the person who is awake has to go to the toilet, only for a moment, and the sick person dies just then. It’s a hard experience. Loved ones feel cheated. They take it very personally. However, there is no reason for this. Maybe you want to feel someone with you when you die. Or maybe you’d rather be alone. Or fate decides everything: your time is up.
The transformation of a living being into dead matter
Muscle tension fades. The eyes go blank. The organs cease to function. It is a radical transformation of a living being into dead matter. From the mathematical point of view, this transformation follows Hopf’s supercritical bifurcation, a chaos theory model describing the loss of equilibrium in a stabilized situation. Doctors say they all want simple answers.
Your chin is sagging, you gasp for air, people around you think this is your last breath. But as a rule, one more thing comes. Or two. You’re finally breathing one last time. Your carotid artery continues to pulsate for two or three seconds more. Then the heart freezes.
- What does dying look like? You start to change. Body first
In the history of mankind, this moment has long been considered the border between life and death: the last breath, the last heartbeat ended life. It sounds clear and unambiguous, but it is not so obvious. The properties of death include the fact that the moment of its occurrence cannot be precisely defined – the border between life and death can be compared to a mirage: when viewed from a distance, it seems clear and clearly visible, here is life, here death. However, the closer the observer is to it, the more blurry it becomes.
So what defines descent – the last breath? Or the moment after it? Heartbeat? The silence that follows? When the heart stops, medicine can sometimes turn a person away from the brink of death. Are people who have no heart alive then? Or are they dead, but not quite so?
There is a kind of “transition state” between death and life
One thing is certain, death is not a switch, which at the moment of death is somehow put back: back and forth, alive – dead. Rather, there is a kind of transition state between death and life. From the point of view of religion, it is here that the dying process takes place: the body surrenders and its functions cease with it, until only your essence, your soul, remains. For science, this approach to death is tantamount to the practice of secret knowledge. However, representatives of both of these points of view used similar instruments to describe this transition state.
The perceptible process of dying was expressed in words, psalms, numbers – and the imperceptible arrival of death was defined by comparisons and metaphors. Hence, many definitions of death say little about it itself, but a lot about life. In the old days, this heart was considered the seat of the soul, and the breath was the main manifestation of life. So the cessation of breathing, the stopping of the heart, must have meant that the person was gone – and therefore: he was dead. However, these symptoms can only be identified after death has occurred. This is also one of the unique properties of death: it is only noticed after the fact.
- Change to soap, squeaks and excretions. This is how our body behaves after death
In fact, both of these concepts – spiritual and rational – become useless in the face of the mystery of the passing of life to death. There are no definitive answers to the question of when death occurs. There are only assumptions that are constantly changing. In the current version, the heart has been replaced with the brain and the soul with consciousness. What Makes a Man a Man? We believe that the brain, and more precisely: what we place in it, the sum of memories, feelings, experiences, skills. Thus, modern man defines his death by the loss of brain functions.
Your heart stopped. What will happen now is a cause for trust and doubt at the same time. Brain activity usually begins after twenty or thirty seconds. Some scientists argue that during this time your body floods your brain with semiochemicals: serotonin, endorphins, dopamine. You know them. They accompanied you when you were in love, sweat flooded your eyes on the sports field when you had sex. They suppress pain and strengthen euphoria. In one experiment, anesthetized rats were connected to an EEG machine and their hearts were stopped. For a few seconds before death, the bioelectrical activity of the dying animals’ brains was much greater than during their lifetime.
Skeptics see this as the last burst of activity in a dying brain that is desperately trying to figure out what is actually going on with it.
For optimists, this is the last explosion fired by the dying brain to leave life with dignity.
And then you’re dead.
We encourage you to listen to the latest episode of the RESET podcast. This time, Dr. Agnieszka Bolikowska – the founder of Linguistics, creator of the 6oMethod® method, will tell us about what slow learning is. How to break the language barrier? How to learn to make mistakes? You will learn about this and other aspects of language learning in today’s episode. Listen!