Catholic ping!
The cliche that "healthcare professionals think they're omniscient" seems to be rooted in reality.
ping for later
Oh good! Then she can tell us if God really exists.
It’s what comes after dying that you have to be prepared for.
Mark
Good post. Makes me want to read the book. I have deaths ahead of me soon and I’d like to see some of this happen for my beloved parents who both have Alzheimer’s.
They have many stories to tell about this subject.
As you might expect, all the hospice workers were all quite devout.
A study like this was done many years ago:
I read a story last week about the possibility of “uploading” one’s brain into a computer in the future, with the idea that it would keep the person “alive”. I thought that sounded really wrong, but couldn’t articulate why.
Here it is: “our brains are separate from our consciousness. In other words, the brain may be channeling what some people call the soul, rather than responsible for creating it.”
Ping to an excellent and important article.
Cat predicts 50 deaths in RI nursing home
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7129952/Cat-predicts-50-deaths-in-RI-nursing-home.html
Excellent article. Thank you for posting.
“...brain may be channelng the soul...”
I attended the Mass in the Catholic cemetery (Our Lady of Angels in Colonie) this morning and the Bishop explained it like this: the timeless (and correct) Catholic teaching is that the soul forms the body rather than visa versa.
Of course, the Bishop articulated this better than I just put it. However, he basically stated that St. Thomas Aquinas articulated this belief in that way: the soul forms the body.
I looked it up, and he is referring to Aquinas’ explanation of hylomorphic unity and it is the opposite of what secularists believe; the brain/body forms the soul.
This perspective in light of the experiences of the caregivers in the article makes perfect sense, especially in consideration of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body that we believe in. The Bishop was explaining that the soldiers who died in battle are not actually dead and living just in memory, but in the sense of the future at the resurrection we will see them in their bodies. Scripture tells us that we are Temples of the Holy Spirit and it makes more sense when understood this way (that the soul forms the body).
The bishop articulated this in the best manner that I have ever heard it explained, and the phenomenon observed by the caregivers and family members in the article as the loved one is nearing death now makes perfect sense in light of the correct theology.
I had planned open heart surgery in January 2012 because of a needed valve repair and four coronary artery bypasses. What happen afterwards was not at all planned and altered my life forever.
After surgery, I was sent to ICU from the operating room and two days later, as they were turning me over in bed to do an x-ray, I started having trouble breathing. I had thrown a pulmonary emboli, a clot, into my lungs. They put an oxygen mask on me to help me breathe but I continued to have labored breathing. My wife, bless her heart, was there at my bedside while this was happening. At one point, she said I pulled the oxygen mask off my face and cried out loud, "I think I'm going to die." That's when I stopped breathing and my heart stopped beating. I was in full cardiac arrest in the bed on the ICU ward. They ushered my wife and all the other patient visitors out of the ICU to the chapel. My wife has been a nurse practitioner for her whole career and she knew my chances of surviving, even in the hospital, were risky.
Amazingly, the chief cardiac surgeon was on the floor at the time and rushed to my side, as did at least 12 other medical personnel to assist the surgeon. He cut my chest back open, cut the wire staples holding my breast bone together and proceeded to perform the miracle that saved my life. He took my heart into his hands and started hand massaging it until after about 10 minutes, it started beating again. They cleaned me up as best as possible but left my chest open in case my heart stopped again. Next day they took me back to the OR and put me back on the heart machine to make sure everything was okay. Two days later, they wired my sternum back together, but they could not stitch my chest wound back together because they had opened me up on the ward, which is not sterile. They were worried about infection. So for two and a half months, I had an open chest wound. It slowly healed shut with the help of a foam vacuum machine. I remained in the hospital for five weeks instead of the normal five days that most heart surgery patients spend. I had two blood transfusions.
Fortunately, I do not remember anything first hand of what I have just told you, including arriving at the hospital for the initial surgery, the cardiac arrest, and nothing of the first two weeks after surgery. I was unconscious most of the time after the arrest because I was heavily medicated. But all that I have told you was relayed to me in detail after the fact by my wife, the surgeons and other medical personnel who were there and involved in the miraculous events when I had expired and was brought back to life. Several told me later that the experience had a profound affect on themselves personally. I ran into the surgeon who massaged my heart back to life a couple of months after the surgery. He told me that he had performed that manual hear massage several times in his career but I was the first patient who had survived the ordeal. He said it was a true miracle.
I never thought I would have problems when I went in for the open heart surgery. I assumed it would go smoothly. How wrong was I. I cried a lot in the months after surgery, thinking about what had happened and how it has changed my life forever. I have fully recovered now, but God was not ready for me to go back then. I must say that I never remember seeing the white light people talk about but I did have a vivid dream for several months after this episode, about God reaching over into the dark abyss and grabbing me by my hair and yanking me back up to life to live a another day. It was not my time to go. It is somewhat haunting to know you died but are still here to live again.
I thank the Lord and count my blessings everyday for the way things turned out. But for the grace of God, the help of the medical team and the prayers of those around me, I would not be here to tell the story of "my miracle."
I’ll never forget the hospice nurse, while in Mom’s room, telling us our mother was “actively dying”. She pointed out several physical characteristics that indicated that to the nurse.
Mom was gone less than two hours later. All of her children were there, hands on, when she passed peacefully.
My uncle Jack died a few years before his father.
When his fathers time came and the family were gathered around his bed “Pop” suddenly sat up in his bed, looked at a high corner of the room, smiled broadly and exclaimed” JACK”! Freaked the fam big time.
When the family leaves the room?
My theory? That is when the nurse increases the morphine drip.
“Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”