how do you feel about watching people die?

[BotanyBoy]

People say if you see it enough you become imune...... I have seen a lot and do not think that is true. It sucks each time. You just learn how to hide the feelings better.

What you are talking about is close to how I feel about it. Except immune is the wrong word, and hiding you feelings isn't quite the right term either. I still feel it, I have just learned to rationalize and accept it. I find the emotional distress/trauma MUCH easier to manage when I go all vulcan and view it from a clinical view.

If my grandfather dropped dead today I would be sad to say the least, but I would know he was dead because he is 68 y/o and has been a chain smoking alcoholic for the past 50 years. As much as I hate to say it, duh....any day now I'm going to get that call, I know every day the odds get higher and higher of it happening.

And when it does I will throw a beer bash in his name because he had a good run, it's what he would want and I will move on with life. I honestly don't understand how some people dwell on it like they do, they are the strong ones taking an emotional beat down like that.

 

[oggbashan]

I am reminded of two quotations:

John Donne "any man's death diminishes me", and

Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori.

The first is true but what I feel about it varies. If it is the death of a stranger I am sad, perhaps, but don't feel as involved as I would be for a friend or a relation.

The second is, and always has been, a lie. Deaths in war can be brutal, wasteful and, since the invention of artillery, incredibly mutilating. I have seen people dying under an artillery barrage. I would never want to see that again.

 

[Licia]

Death:life. Same thing.

Suicide, OD, old age, sickness and pumping a meat suit full of chemicals to keep it floaty, 'don't lose it right now, the 'rents can't handle the corpse and you at the same time.'

Grief? Never been immune.

 

[blobfish]

Death:life. Same thing.

Suicide, OD, old age, sickness and pumping a meat suit full of chemicals to keep it floaty, 'don't lose it right now, the 'rents can't handle the corpse and you at the same time.'

Grief? Never been immune.

You may be the strangest person on the internet.

 

[BotanyBoy]

You may be the strangest person on the internet.

Sayz a lot coming from you blob

 

[blobfish]

Sayz a lot coming from you blob

I know! I'm an autofellating attention whore, but I still find her strange. I don't mean that in a bad way.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Death comes in many flavors. Killing someone trying to kill you is one kind, watching a building collapse atop a group of girls is another, watching an elderly person slip away as her heart fails is yet another.

What always impresses me is the finality of death, and the stillness that follows it.

 

[Peregrinator]

Every death I've attended has been with me working my ass off to prevent it by every means I had available at the time. It doesn't affect me in the moment; my focus is always on what interventions I might use, what I might not have thought of, getting the patient packaged for transport, etc. Sometimes, later, I feel sad, but invariably that's because I saw the survivors' grief.

 

[HornyVikingMN]

my sympathies dementia is cruel.

Dolf - more than I ever knew. My father was diagnosed with a form of dementia just two months ago. He drove himself to the appointment. Today, he wouldn't be able to drive out of the parking lot of the nursing home he's in.

For moments, he's still there... still the man we knew. But only for moments, and then he's back to being slumped over in the chair, not really asleep but certainly not awake. His conscious mind is all but gone. His body is breaking down and becoming immobile. It's tragic, and it sucks.

 

[fgarvb1]

I'm against it basically.

Puts a downer slant on the whole day.

That being said...I know a few People I could probably recover a good mood over quickly.

 

[Fala]

I offer my condolences to the many of you who have lost one's you love.

Fortunately for me, those in my life who would be the "point of no return" have not yet passed.

I honestly don't know what I'd do.

I can only try to put myself into their shoes and hope for a quick and painless passing.

If not...I would rejoice at the moment of no longer suffering.

Death is every bit as much as life. It's so much harder on those who love them, yet continue to live to mourn them.

 

[dolf]

thanks, guys.
do you think we talk about death enough? too much? do we wrap it in too many clichés or are we too blunt?

 

[HB1965]

I have watched several people die in the course of my professional life. I've found that how it happens is different for every type of problem. I've lost my fear of it over time. It's going to happen whether I want it to or not so I might as well accept that it exists.

I think that humanity has mystified death in the past couple of hundred years and turned it into something to be afraid of. Once upon a time we used to life with it. I think we need to go back to that.

 

[Fala]

thanks, guys.
do you think we talk about death enough? too much? do we wrap it in too many clichés or are we too blunt?

Since you revived this thread, Dolf.

I absolutely cannot handle seeing or hearing of the death of animals.

I know, it's bizarre...

I can't even watch "Animal Planet" and start bawling at any footage showing a baby antelope being taken by a lion, hiding my eyes and screaming at somebody to change the channel.

I'm so fucking weird.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Since you revived this thread, Dolf.

I absolutely cannot handle seeing or hearing of the death of animals.

I know, it's bizarre...

I can't even watch "Animal Planet" and start bawling at any footage showing a baby antelope being taken by a lion, hiding my eyes and screaming at somebody to change the channel.

I'm so fucking weird.

Every time the Sarah Mclachlan ASPCA commercial comes on...
http://gifsftw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tracy-morgan.gif

Me ^^

 

[Saint Peter]

Since you revived this thread, Dolf.

I absolutely cannot handle seeing or hearing of the death of animals.

I know, it's bizarre...

I can't even watch "Animal Planet" and start bawling at any footage showing a baby antelope being taken by a lion, hiding my eyes and screaming at somebody to change the channel.

I'm so fucking weird.

I do not think that is weird.

I can handle nature and the beasts. Losing my dogs and cats takes a piece of me each time.

 

[scorallover]

You never get use to it if you are anywhere near normal. You learn to cope and deal. There should always be a sadness when another person dies. Even lives taken in the heat of battle leave an impression. Maybe not at that time, but when everything is over and you have time to take a breath it has an impact on you. People mistake jokes told by people in war as insensitive, but it is actually a way of coping with what you see, or have to do. Life is unfair in many ways, but in death we are all equal. We might not get the same sendoff, but in the end all that is left is a lifeless vessel.

 

[Johnny_Ray_Wilson]

Are you talking about the final moments, or the decline leading up to it? I haven't witnessed the moment of death, but I've got a front row seat to the decline of my father. It ain't pretty. In his case, I'd say that I want to be there when the moment comes.

I can relate. My father, brother, and I all watched my mother succumb to cancer. She died while holding my father's hand as he slept with his head resting on her stomach. My father died from a broken heart less than a year later. He sent me out on some bullshit errand and was dead when I came back 2 hours later. By then my brother had married, but the last time I seen him alive was shortly after we sold my parents' house. Six months later, I was the last one standing over his grave when he was put to rest. I arranged the funerals of all 3. I have not been the same since then.

 

[Fala]

Every time the Sarah Mclachlan ASPCA commercial comes on...
http://gifsftw.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/tracy-morgan.gif

Me ^^

Criminy, I totally know what you are talking about.

That one commercial, the old Ben E. King song...

The skinny kitten walking along the railroad tracks....kills me

Well, my mom is known for being the cat lady of her area. She does the catch and release thing.

I have 4 (previously) unwanteds at my office. I also have a cat at home.

Nothing like the look in their eyes when they look up at you.

People need to neuter/spay their animals. period.

 

[dolf]

maybe you detach less for animals. because they're less traumatic.
?

 

[ChinaBandit]

I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.

 

[Peregrinator]

thanks, guys.
do you think we talk about death enough? too much? do we wrap it in too many clichés or are we too blunt?

I don't think we talk about it enough, and I refuse to use the common euphemisms. My wife's uncle, two of my uncles and our cat and a friend of ours and one of the guys I was with in Kyrgyzstan have all died recently. They died. They're dead. That's the truth and the reality. No euphemism is going to alter that. It may be my training and experience in medicine, but I fucking hate it when people use euphemisms. They didn't "pass," they're not "with God" or "in a better place." They're dead.

As soon as an animal, human or beloved pet or bacterium or whatever, comes into the world, it begins dying. That's a fact, an inescapable fact. I think we should teach our kids to understand and accept that. I also think we should teach our kids that it's okay, nay, healthy and normal, to have feelings about that. Grieving is a good, positive, healthy thing.

 

[Fala]

I shot a man in Reno/Just to watch him die.

As long as you didn't shoot his cat.

 

[atmas]

I have been present during the death of exactly 12 people: 2 family members, and ten people as a result of volunteering as an EMT for 8 years. I cannot speak to the family members (don't ask) but the 10 people I worked who didn't survive each had an unusually blissful expression on their faces. It seems almost cruel to interrupt it by trying to bring them back.

My lucky number 13 was in total cardiac arrest, shock was not happening but paramedic was pushing lactated ringers while we did CPR. Only after arriving at the ED and going through paperwork did I discover this patient had survived. Though not privy to any personal information, my life, after literally pulling a life back from death, has not quite been the same.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm going to die from Lupus right after I unleash the beast.