Piranhas!
Monday, January 12 2009
If you missed it, check out this article in the Washington Post, on medicine and dying.
… never before in history has it been so hard to fulfill our final earthly task: dying. It used to be that people were “visited” by death. With nothing to fight it, we simply accepted it and grieved. Today, thanks to myriad medications and interventions that have been created to improve our health and prolong our lives, dying has become a difficult and often excruciatingly slow process.
It’s an interesting and important article – part of a conversation we all need to have about our views on death. Nonetheless, I want to poke a little fun:
Everyone wants to grow old and die in his or her sleep, but the truth is that most of us will die in pieces. Most will be nibbled to death by piranhas, and the piranhas of senescence are wearing some very dull dentures.
One hopes the piranhas at least remember to put in their dentures; being gummed to death by the piranhas of senescence could be even worse.
I found this through Dr. Kevin, who credited you with the find. I’m telling you, half the words in that Washington Post article are pure poetry.