A palliative care doctor wants to break the taboo around death and explains what happens to us when we die peacefully.
Quite a lot of people fear death and avoid discussing the subject because we don't know what happens afterwards.
However, Dr Kathryn Mannix, a palliative care doctor and author, has had a frank conversation with BBC Ideas, about death and what happens when a person is about to die.
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She said: “In my humble opinion, dying is probably not as bad as you’re expecting.”
She starts by saying many of us don’t mention the ‘D words’ and in place of saying ‘dead’, we settle for alternatives such as 'passed away'.
When it comes to conversations about death, they can be awkward and unwanted, as we're not sure how to approach the situation.
The problem is, Dr Mannix says, that when we don’t use the correct words, families may not understand that death is approaching and then could find themselves in a situation where nobody knows how to act or what to say to a loved one who is dying, let alone what to expect, Daily Star reports.
Dr Mannix said: “We’ve lost the rich wisdom of normal human dying and it’s time for us to talk about dying and reclaim the wisdom.”
Dr Mannix discusses the pattern of a 'peaceful' death and compares it to childbirth.
“Dying, like giving birth, really is just a process. Gradually people become more tired, more weary. As time goes by people sleep more and they’re awake less," Mannix added.
She continues: “Sometimes a visitor might happen or a medicine might be due during that sleep and that is when we can discover that a change has taken place, it’s tiny but it’s really significant and it’s just instead of just being asleep, this person has temporarily become unconscious.
“When they wake later on, they tell us they’ve had a good sleep, so we know that this coma doesn’t feel frightening. That lapsing into unconsciousness just isn't noticed by us when it happens.
“So as time goes by, people are awake less and asleep more until eventually, they’re just unconscious all the time.”
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Dr Mannix goes a step further to describe what a death rattle is, what causes the phenomenon and why it's not to be feared.
Talking from the perspective of the one dying, she says: “We will be so relaxed that we won’t bother to clear our throats, so maybe we’ll be breathing in and out through little bits of mucus or saliva at the back of our throat, it can make a rattly, funny noise.
“People talk about the death rattle as if it’s something terrible but actually it tells me that my patient is so deeply relaxed, so deeply unconscious that they’re not even feeling that tickle of saliva as the air bubbles in and out through it from their lungs.”
The build-up to death is one thing but even the last few breaths drawn by someone can be peaceful according to Mannix.
She continues: “At the very end of somebody’s life, there will be a period of shallow breathing and then one ‘out breath’ that just isn’t followed by another ‘in breath’. Sometimes it’s so gentle that families don’t even realise that it’s happened.”
Dr Mannix believes that we need to normalise conversations around death in the hope we can be educated and console people better when needed.
She ends the chat by saying: “Normal human dying, just a really gentle process. Something that we can recognise, something that we can prepare for, something that we can manage and this should be something that we can celebrate.
“This is something that we should be able to console each other with but because it’s become impolite to talk about dying, it’s the really best-kept secret in medicine.
“Dying is something we should be reclaiming, we should be talking about, we should be consoling each other about.”
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