X-Message-Number: 26803 Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 22:18:16 -0400 From: Randolfe Wicker <> Subject: Warning time before death Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Thomas Donaldson refers to a study which found 83% of dying patients have a week's warning time before death. I've taken care of two dying people for months on end. One day, one of them replied to me when I said upon leaving:"See you later."--"If I am still here." I told this to a mutual friend who was a physician. She told me that "whenever a patient says he/she is dying, you can count on that being the case." She came over and quietly counted the breaths and heartbeats per minute, told me he couldn't last much longer. Both the patient and the physician were right. I'd been given patches to ease his discomfort while dying. The next morning, he never awoke and was in obvious discomfort. I put on the patches and he died three hours later. So, regardless of how "optimistic" the physician might be, patients have the innate ability to frequently ignore misleading advice and deal with the fact that they are dying. Randolfe (Randy) Wicker Videographer, Writer, Activist Avisor: The Immortality Institute Hoboken, NJ Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=26803