Death: 2 Days & Counting

I just finished my first block for the year, Senior Surgery. Very enjoyable block, great teachers, great patients, great friends, sweet long hours on call, sweet A&E rota etc. Unfortunately I also faced my first fairly personal experience with a dying patient.

Young lady, mid-30s, came in quite late (i.e. with advanced disease) looking very unwell and properly dehydrated. She was well distended when she came in, with really obvious signs of generalized peritonism. She deteriorated very quickly, and an exploratory laparotomy had to be performed. It showed a macroscopically obvious widespread ischaemic/necrotic gut on the whole SMA distribution, most probably embolus/trombus related.

Nothing could be done, she was closed, and when she came around gain, she was told that she was unlikely to survive more than 2 days. She was inconsolably sad... like seriously teary. The team felt awful, choked with a sense of helplessness.

And I was told that her dying experience was not going to be too dreadful, and indeed I hope she didn't.

Then came the weekend, and when I came back on Monday, she was gone.

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The weekend gave me a chance to reflect on life, with a wierd expectation of not seeing her again the week after. It gave me a chance to ask myself, "What if I was told, nay, medically expected, to die in 2 days?"

Strangely enough (or not), I felt a twisted sense of 'happiness and joy' at such hypothetical situation. Nevertheless in reality, only Allah knows how I would felt should it ever happen. But indeed I felt it was a God-given chance, as a Muslim, to almost 'know', you are going to die in an almost 'fixed' time period. Don't get me wrong, Allah IS the holder of lifes and deaths, the ONE and ONLY. Not doctors, not even Izrail. But as a muslim, such a prediction should probably be seen as an opportunity, a 'written' and 'confirmed' warning from Allah that you are going to die soon enough. An opportunity to maximize my potential to do good deeds, make taubah, ask for forgiveness from family and friends alike, etc etc.

Verily this is just a hypothetical "best case scenario" situation. More often than not, it doesn't work that way, ironically for the greater good of mankind. Wallahua'lam.