Health: Death & Dying

A cat with an uncanny ability to detect when nursing home patients are about to die has proven itself in around 50 cases by curling up with them in their final hours, according to a new book.

CBS 2 HD recently met a Brooklyn man who lived after his heart quit for 47 minutes, and it's all thanks to a team of doctors who refused to give up until they brought him back from the dead.

Huston Smith sat at the bedside of his firstborn child, watching her life ebb away.

"I have no complaints," Karen Smith told her father. "I am at peace."

During their last moments together, Karen told her father that she was thinking of angels. She told him not to cry. She told him how much she loved the ocean.

Across the country, people with grave concerns about the high cost of dying are exploring a range of cost-cutting alternatives. For many, it's a necessity.

We are a group of death care enthusiasts who enjoy following the death care industry. Our focus is on current news, past traditions and new trends in this field. No matter if you are interested in green funerals or Irish-American funeral traditions, you can find this information and more here at Deathcare.com.

In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates.

We were attracted to this interview from the literary journal Willow Springs, conducted by Megan Cuilla, Mandy Iverson, and Aaron Weidert, because of Lynch’s sheer erudition on a number of broad matters. “I write sonnets and I embalm, and I’m happy to take questions on any subject in between those two,” he explains.

Linda Fleming was diagnosed with terminal cancer and feared her last days would be filled with pain and ever-stronger doses of medication that would erode her mind. The 66-year-old woman with late-stage pancreatic cancer wanted to be clear-headed at death, so she became the first person to kill herself under Washington state's new assisted suicide law, known as "death with dignity."

Whether happening "truly near death" or under benign circumstances, the near-death experience contains powerful images and emotions, usually of peace and love though sometimes terror, despair, guilt. An NDE may include an out-of-body experience and vivid perceptions of movement, light, darkness; encounters with deceased loved ones, unfamiliar entities and/or spiritual presences; sometimes a life review, a landscape, a sense of overpowering knowledge and purpose. The aftereffects of an NDE or related experience are enduring, often powerful, and may be life-altering...

The Peaceful Pill Handbook draws on the latest research on end of life choices, to bring the reader a range of practical and useful strategies. By applying Exit's unique Reliability and Peacefulness Test; readers can compare methods including Nembutal from Mexico, the use of Helium, the Dignitas service of Switzerland, presricription drugs and the DIY Peaceful Pill. This new edition also contains full colour photos of Mexican drug names and the latest labelling.