Contents
Be courageous and ask the doctors. They already know what you want to ask, because everyone is asking: how much time do I have left? There are many answers to this question. Categorical. Optional. True. It is a matter of statistics.
- What happens to your body when you die? What do you feel? What does death look like? These questions are answered in the book How We Die by Roland Schulz
- The statistics give the average survival time for all diseases in exactly weeks or even days
- When the dying process begins, the body begins to change first. “Your body becomes different, less obedient”
- «It is possible that you will be shocked when you realize that this is what was the last time. Last time in the mountains. At work. Behind the wheel”
- The world of the dying man begins to shrink. People are also disappearing with places
- More interesting information can be found on the Onet homepage.
An excerpt from Roland Schulz’s book “How we die”, which we publish thanks to the courtesy of the Muza Publishing House
Modern medicine measures the results of its work very accurately: the effects of drugs, the consequences of surgery, the effects of therapy, there are also new illnesses, the course of treatment, and deaths – everything is recorded and analyzed. Some of this data is captured in single codes, others in endless curves that measure mortality in terms of time and number, using a variety of indices. It’s not as complicated as it looks.
How much time do you have left?
Suppose they found you had a brain tumor. Malicious. It is glioblastoma multiforme, the most common of the malignant brain tumors. There is a lot of data, a lot, so it’s easy to make a prognosis of how long a person with glioblastoma can live. Statistical methods are used to construct forecasts. One of them, willingly used by doctors, is the so-called Kaplan-Meier estimator, which allows to measure the number of patients who have survived a certain time. The graph usually looks like a staircase leading more or less steeply down. However, in the case of glioblastoma, these stairs end in a cliff. Almost all patients die within two years.
How much time do you have left? Your doctor will judge it based on this curve: on average, people with glioblastoma multiforme live for 11 months. But that doesn’t mean – this is the fundamental difference between a statistic and a single case – that you still have 11 months to live. Some people die a few weeks after diagnosis. Others live for more than two years. This is what makes it very difficult to answer your question unambiguously. The statistics give the average survival time for all diseases in exactly weeks or even days. However, it does not allow any doctor in the world to predict exactly where you are on the Kaplan-Meier curve of your disease.
That is why many doctors choose the optional one instead of a categorical answer: they do not give a date, but a time period. He says most people with glioblastoma multiforme live for several months or several years. But you still know the real answer to your question: perhaps you will die later than everyone expects, but certainly sooner than you wish.
Your body becomes different, less obedient
You start to change. Body first. It is changing slowly, but it is not the calm pace at which we age year after year. This change is different, more radical, as if your body is suddenly thrown off balance. You are fat in your hips, there are furrows on your face.
You are losing strength, your limbs are getting weaker and weaker. The muscles seem to become foreign. This feeling is humiliating. Childhood and youth was a time of getting to know your body and the signals it sent: aha, the stinging in your side appears after a long run; the sour, metallic taste in your mouth comes from the secretions of your gallbladder, and a tingling sensation in your legs is a sign that you are feeling sick. But in the decades that followed, the body, the intimate homeland of your “I”, was already well known to you. And now you have a vague feeling that this homeland is gradually moving away, just as the land receding when you put out to sea.
Your body becomes different, less obedient. Dying has many symptoms, some of which appear very early. Perhaps you will be constipated. Or diarrhea. Or maybe you’ll get hiccups. Possibly itching. You fall tired once. Other times, you suffer from insomnia. You often feel sick and vomit. You feel exhausted. All of this is what doctors call symptomatic burden. This is an apt name.
The weight you carry on your shoulders overwhelms you like a yoke. But it is not only suffering that makes this burden so great. It is also knowing that you can no longer trust your own body. You start to look at them differently, more suspiciously. You carefully analyze every thrill that passes through you. You listen to every noise. You watch yourself like a guard, with your senses sharpened so as not to miss the slightest change, the quietest heralds. Your body seems to have passed over to the enemy’s side. Doctors talk in this context about existential humiliation that causes diseases as bad as yours. The dying people at the beginning of the road describe this disintegration as follows: one morning you look in the mirror and see someone you hardly know. Your body changes, and so does the human who lives in it.
The shadow of death shows the beauty of life even more clearly
Sorrow enters your suffering. It is possible that you will be shocked when you realize that this was the last time that it was. Last time in the mountains. At work. Behind the wheel. Last time having sex with someone you love. The last snow. Last restaurant bill. The last time the moon is over you. The last time you do what you know best.
Perhaps knowing that so many things will no longer be experienced will knock you out. Christmas. Birth of a grandson. Wine of future vintages. How your daughter learns to walk, how your son starts talking. Her first day of school. His first love problems. How is your dream come true that no one knows about. The next soccer world cup and who will receive the Oscar, the Nobel Prize. Summer sun.
Your sadness, no matter what form it takes, is normal. Wherever you turn, whatever you undertake, everything is shadowed by death. This shows the beauty of life even more clearly.
Your world begins to shrink. The journeys are getting closer, very slowly at first, then faster and faster. You will not go on holiday abroad where doctors speak other languages. No trips to another city as they could make you very weak. The places in your life that used to be – if only in dreams – scattered all over the world are dwindling. People disappear along with places. The villages and towns of childhood become like foreign continents. Theater at the other end of town – too far. Supermarket around the corner – out of reach. You rarely go out on the street. In fact, you only sit at home. Your field of view is getting narrower, the view from the window, the TV set. This is how dying makes itself felt. You say goodbye to places, to people, and finally to yourself.
This may interest you:
- We are dying in installments. What Happens to the Body After Death?
- Everyone remembers about the candles on November 1. But many forget the most important
- Why does the human body stiffen after death?
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