The mystery that is death can be described in numerous ways. Nobody can predict with accuracy when and where death will occur. Death can occur through old age, disease, accidents, murder and execution. The above different circumstances provide the platform on which death can be explained in numerous ways. Death can be described as the cessation of all life supporting events in a living thing’s body (Murphy, 2007, p. 130). From an early age, children get to learn about relatives and friends who have passed away and who pass away during their lifetime. Slowly, reality dawns on them that life is not forever and that every human being has his/her own day and way of death. Death and events leading to death transform people in different ways depending on the situation and context. Some people meet their death in cruel situations while others die peacefully in their sleep. Other dies young while other die old. Some people die from incurable diseases, while others die from old age and natural causes. Others die from suicide while some like fetuses have their lives terminated even before they grow to term (Murphy, 2007, 1994, p. 84). In all the above death situations, people involved acquire different views and attitudes that change their perception on death. The events may make people including medics to fear or embrace death, have respect and/or disrespect for life or simply feel powerless on the face of such mystery.
These kinds of death can be looked at from different perspectives. They can be examined from the views of grieving parents and family members, authorities, members of society and medical practitioners. Of more importance however are the medical practitioners including nurses and doctors who in most cases witness death first hand. These professionals are trained in ways of controlling medical conditions like diseases and reckless behaviors so that mortality can be can be kept check. Ironically, they are the people who have experienced different patients die from different causes in ways often not pleasant (Pendle, 2008, p. 214).
This deathography will be a reflective essay from a medical practitioner’s perspective- a nurse to be specific on death and loss events in the time of practice. More often than not, the death and loss events shape the views and attitudes of the practitioners in ways that are more or less similar to other people not in the profession. The paper will also focus on the effect of these death and loss events on professionals’ beliefs and attitudes on a personal and professional level. It’s important to stress that though the essay will not be told from a first person narration point, the events described are real life events that have characterized one of the practitioners from the nursing field. Even in the places where the experiences are referenced, the practitioner has just chosen the references that are commensurate with the experiences that he has gone through.
Execution
Capital punishment is widely prevalent in the US and China and many other countries in the world. Some condemned inmates on death row in these territories are killed through hanging, lethal injection, electric chair and firing squad (Nisbet, 2010, p. 108). In Australia however, capital punishment has been formally abolished. It was last used in 1967 and since, then all states and territories have abandoned the death penalty as a form of punishment. Ronald Ryan who was hanged in Victoria in 1967 was the last Australian to face capital punishment (Helen, 2005, p. 33). As a widely travelled medic however, I have witnessed death through execution in the US. Thirty-seven states in the US carry out execution through lethal injection. Though some people deserve to die due to their actions that take human life, induced death on these condemned persons draws a lot of reactions. Death by lethal injection can is the use of fatal drugs on a person with an intention of causing immediate death or termination of life (Miller et al, 2009, p.208). Attending any execution either as a medic or a member of the public can be a nerve wrenching experience. Some of the condemned persons do express remorse while other don’t and insist that they are innocent. Normally, combinations of drugs are administered on the condemned people that cause unconsciousness or sleep followed by death by causing the paralysis of the respiratory system (Terkel & Elder, 2010, p. 36).
Watching Timoth McVeigh get executed in Oklahoma could have easily made any person have second opinion on death through lethal injection. It’s not that his execution was special than others but live watching makes a difference. First, the lethal injection method is meant to cause minimum pain (Sorensen & Pilgrim, 2006, p. 48). However, the fact that one is put to sleep and the respiratory is paralyzed afterward leaves many questions on the effectiveness of the method in causing painful death. Watching McVeigh gasp for breath and the fact that one’s brain is very much a live at that time means there is some pain that is felt during the process. Death through lethal injection is expected to take place within seven minutes (Martschukat & Sarat, 2011, p. 163). However there are cases like Christopher Newton’s on may 2007 where the execution process took more than two hours. It’s important for the authorities to note that some of the people put on death row may be innocent.
Therefore, emotional torture that a person goes through waiting for sure death for two hours is too much to bear. Everyone prefers that justice be served in cases where heinous crimes were committed especially murder. However, consideration must be given to the possibility of innocence on the condemned person’s part and the innocent family members that may be watching. Additionally, it can be argued that it’s against medical ethics for physician to preside over death and loss of life that he/she swore to protect (Prejean, 2006, p. 56). From a medical and personal perspective therefore, its execution may be used to serve justice but experiencing it in real life easily leads one to conclude that other forms of punishment like life in prison are better off. Additionally, avoidance of the process by medical practitioners will be in order so as to maintain consistency with the code of ethics that govern the profession. Again, the emotional torture of all the participants like law enforcement members of the public and families of the condemned persons does little to portray the process worth undertaking.
Cancer
It’s estimated that by the year 2050, almost half of the deaths in the world will be caused by cancer (Kalthoff, 2009, p.11). Cancer it’s a killer that is lethal than HIV/ Aids and Malaria and comparable to the respiratory illnesses like SARS and Bird Flu (Rosenbaum, et al, 2008, p. 34). Every day, medical practitioners are ever witnessing rising numbers of cancer patients in a rate that is very disturbing. The treatment and control procedures of cancer are costly and sadly a good number of people die from the disease, painfully (Manton et al., 2009, p. 76).
Many medical practitioners can agree that death from cancer is painful (Manton et al., 2009, p. 56). The chemotherapy procedures and the administration of drugs involved are strenuous and drain the patients of the health they once enjoyed. As said early, a medical practitioner will always witness death of all kinds. However it’s one thing to witness death from natural causes and death from cancer due to ignorance or illusions that have no scientific backing at all (Dawson, 2010, p. 54).
A very disturbing trend is slowly creeping up among cancer patients and that has left many professionals baffled (Jones, 2008, p. 81). There is a rise in quackery where apparent cancer “experts” offers patients homeopathic treatments that promise them cure. Patients do this in order to avoid the chemotherapy process that is rightfully painful (Dawson, 2010, p. 67).
One case whose identity details cannot be reveled for confidential reasons took place in Pelham, New Hampshire. The patient succumbed to cancer four months after she started the cancer treatment regimen that had been prescribed to her. Her condition prompted a little dig on her background that revealed disturbing details. The patient has spent thousands of dollars travelling and receiving homeopathic therapy from people she knew privately. Curiously she had kept her family members including the husband from her status till it was too late. After a few months prognosis, the surgeon consultant and the radiation therapists revealed to the family that her condition was untreatable. She met her death after only four months.
Her decision to skip the universally accepted and authorized chemotherapy procedures may be understandable, only within a limited context. Chemotherapy is a painful procedure (Vande & Trujillo, 2008, p. 76). For a medical professional and any other person for that matter, it’s painful to see people faithfully go through the chemotherapy procedures and finally end up dying, which sadly is the case many times. In the health centres, medical professionals witness all the negative effects of chemotherapy and the slow death that is as a result (Bignold, 2006, p. 45). Some patients have died from depressed immune systems as result of chemotherapy (Elahi, 2007, p. 142). Others have died from bleeding complications for instance GI bleeding that leaves the victims pale and with expressions of pain on their faces (Meyers, 2007, p. 191). Besides, chemotherapy has killed many cancer patients through damage of major organs like the heart, kidney and lungs (Stubblefield & O’Dell, 2009, p. 64). Others have had their nervous system damaged together with loss of weight. Many patients have died from the complications that the toxicity that chemotherapy comes along with (Edelstein, 2010, p. 25). However, despite all the negative aspects of chemotherapy listed above, it’s not enough an excuse for one to avoid it.
Far more painful and heart wrenching cancer deaths take place during one’s career that completely change the person’s view of life and the meaning attached to it. The suffering and death of cancer victims often affects professionals. For instance, it’s common to see patients dying in unrelenting pain that comes from constant drugging and with narcotics (Kalthoff, 2009, p. 116). Patients also experience persistent vomiting owing to the uncorrectable bowel obstruction that always leads to death (Rosenbaum et al., 2008, p. 235). It’s always painful to see nasogastric tubes inserted to the victims’ digestive system to drain the juices so as to control the vomiting and other tubes that are inserted into the stomach to drain fluids. It’s also common to see patients die from excessive bleeding due to lack of enough platelets. Other patients experience hemorrhagic stroke, bleeding from the rectum and incessant vomiting of blood (Mbeng, 2006, p. 119). Sometimes death from cancer results from severe cases of cachexia that is quite scary and can only be compared to few cases like the concentration camps of the Nazi. One of the most painful episodes of cancer deaths to experience as a medical professional is death resulting from victims lungs filling with fluid that make them choke on their secretions with suffocation that cannot be relieved (Siddik, 2009, p. 47). It’s not one of scenes that even the bravest can stand.
What was interesting about the above case is that the victim a learned and respectable person of sound mind. In fact she was a registered nurse. It therefore comes as a shock when such a person makes a lapse judgment like she did. This brings to the fore the growing misconception among people including taught people that chemotherapy is not healthy. A hypothetical conclusion is that there is a lot of misinformation and brainwashing that is rampant and that is costing many people their lives.
Witnessing death from cancer is harrowing and elicits some of the deepest fears in a human being. It creates illusions and perspectives that can easily make someone to conclude that life is useless. The complexity associated with it coupled with the difficulty to control and treat it always invokes feelings of helplessness that even medical practitioners cannot help but have. Sometimes, one can’t help but feel that life is only important when you are of sound healthy. It makes one to approach life one day at a time. It’s not uncommon for practioners to feel that their work is not worth when the very procedures they perform to alleviate pain and suffering in patients lead to death. It makes them question their faith and effectives of the processes. More often than not, medical professionals like all other human beings don’t have answers to the questions and issues that result from deaths resulting from events such as cancer and execution. Deep thinking about it will normally lead to the compounding of the problem. It’s perhaps the reason why many of them have adopted the attitude of doing their work to the best of their r ability and leaving the rest to nature and God.
Conclusion
The deaths described above barely account for the many that are witnessed daily in the medical field. The events that shape them sure affect every person. However, aside from the drastic ones, medical practitioners continually get accustomed to them, though it takes quite an emotional toll on some of them. The pain and suffering that people go through always serves as a reminder to medics that they are human are they will in one way or the other go through the same. The medics’ views that perhaps get drastically transformed are religious views. Somehow one feels like questioning God the purpose of such suffering and death. But like many phenomena in the world today its all a mystery.
References
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