The Immortality of Death

By Dr. Suzanne Walter

Dr. Sue Walter is a palliative medical specialist. She deals with patients who have life limiting illnesses. This book contains some of her memoirs which are unexpectedly life affirming.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Jun 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637674796

Book preview

Suzanne_Walter_-_The_Immortality_of_Death_Front_Cover.jpg

Copyright © 2021 by Dr. Suzanne Walter

Paperback: 978-1-63767-478-9

eBook: 978-1-63767-479-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021918032

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of nonfiction.

Ordering Information:

BookTrail Agency

8838 Sleepy Hollow Rd.

Kansas City, MO 64114

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

1. THE ODDITIES OF DEATH

2. TRAPPED

3. MY JOURNEY THROUGH PALLIATIVE CARE

4. WHAT IS PALLIATIVE CARE?

5. HOW LONG

6. WISHES

7. COULD YOU KILL MY BABY?

8. DO MIRACLES HAPPEN?

9. AS END OF LIFE DRAWS NEAR

10. TERMINAL AGITATION

11. A DAY AT THE UNDERTAKERS

12. EUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED EUTHANASIA

13. ME

REFERENCES

1

THE ODDITIES OF DEATH

Should we cast our minds

back even 50 years ago, births and deaths were very natural processes that happened within the family home. Mama would give birth to a new little sibling and Aunty Agnes would die of old age in one of the bedrooms, with the smells of home cooking and the sounds of children playing all around her. How comforting for Aunty Agnes and the children in the house.

Today births and deaths are hospital events. Children are not allowed to enter ICU wards or labour wards. Death happens behind the big white sterile doors in the hospital where lights are on 24 hours a day, machines beep incessantly, codes are called, and deaths are announced. The only smell is disinfectant. Occasionally one will hear the anguished cry of a family member whose loved one has just died or the rolling, squeaking wheels of the mortuary gurney for the patient who is clinging to life or trying to relax enough to let go – to die.

We are raising a generation who fear death. Our children are exposed to violent television programs and movies that are rated PG yet the characters are being decapitated, tortured or shot to death. Computer games are scored on how many people you can slay in as short a period as possible. Family members who are sick are tucked away in the deep recesses of a hospital. How can our children feel that death is a normal process? How can they know that it can be peaceful or a mere relaxation or shutting down?

Our times have become so odd about death, we medical professionals are not allowed to enter old age as a cause of death on a death certificate. We have to find a medical reason – Cardiopulmonary arrest is also not enough as for your heart and breathing to stop, there must be a medical reason. If the medical practitioner cannot summon up a medical reason for a 103-year-old patient to die, that patient will by law be subjected to an autopsy where a medical examiner will search for a reason for death to enter on the Death Certificate.

I am in no way advocating that we must not be wary of suspicious deaths and abuse to elderly patients but why can’t we die of old age without being unceremoniously filleted for a better reason?

I frequently see our ICU’s filled with patients who are terminally ill with no chance of recovery to any quality of life. They become dependent on breathing machines, intravenous drugs that push their blood pressures up, dialysis machines to take over the job of the kidneys. They are subjected to daily or bi-daily blood tests and continual monitoring. The advancement in medicine is certainly keeping our patients alive – if artificial body function is defined as life. These patients are fed via nasogastric tubes or PEGS – tubes inserted directly in the stomach. Caloric intake for the dying patient is very low but we continue to pump food into their bodies according to weight and protein requirements for someone who is expected to return to a good quality of life. We drain litres of fluid into their veins in fear of dehydration. In all this feeding and hydration, our patients become more symptomatic with greater needs to vomit or have diarrhoea, increased frequency of urination, increased secretions in their chest which results in a death rattle generalised oedema which means that the patient’s body simply cannot handle all that we pump in and their body starts to swell up.

I was an intern at the Johannesburg Hospital. It was during rotation in the gynaecological ward round when I encountered my first palliative patient. She was a 68-year-old African lady, Ms Sophie who had recently been diagnosed with inoperable ovarian cancer. Her cancer had spread to her