The last breath The physical and ethical end of life The physical process of death More than half the people who died in your living room this year were probably shot, stabbed, or killed themselves, and a surprising number had a supernatural death. Watching television is the way most people first encounter death, and it is often our closest encounters with it until our parents die. Research into the content of popular programmes shows that portrayals of natural deaths, which occur 92% of the time in real life, are the exception on television. Our living room experience of death is the ultimate fake media. There, people die of the wrong things in unrealistic ways. This article will aim to correct that balance. I will cover the top five physical signs that show that death will occur within three days, discuss if a “wet” or a “dry” death is preferable, and explain the death smile and the death rattle. How people die is changing. Deaths from cancer and dementia now account for 4 out of every 10 deaths in England, and many others die from multiple long-term conditions. Sudden deaths from heart attacks and strokes are, likewise, decreasing. So how do people die if their hearts keep on beating and their lungs keep breathing? For most people entering the terminal phase of their lives, the desire to eat and drink decreases. Most people will die within 10 days of stopping drinking, and begin to fall in and out of consciousness within three days. There is concern that people dying in this way are suffering intense thirst and pain. This concern leads some practitioners to turn the “dry” death into a “wet” death. Hydration and nutrition is added via drips or PEG tubes inserted through the abdomen directly into the stomach. These measures in the last days of life may not extend
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I, Science
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