may sound silly

One of the things about being in the healthcare industry where you work with patients is that you are forced to come face to face with your beliefs and fears. As a respiratory therapist you will most likely be involved in a lot of code blues (if you work in the acute hospital) where a good percentage die and don't make it through the code blue. In fact, the patients are clinically dead while they are being coded. Maybe you ought to re-think your choice of career if that's going to be a problem for you. What do you think it is that bothers you about death? You really should think on this?

I've had a curiosity about death since I was a kid. I think I may have been an embalmer in ancient Egypt in another incarnation. I bugged a guy from a local funeral home who used to do our body removals at a nursing home where I worked until he finally let me watch him do an embalming. I don't want people to misunderstand when I say I was thrilled over this, but what I mean is that it gave me closure to many questions I had about the process of embalming and death. I, personally, believe that our physical body is just a shell and that our true self is our soul which lives on. I've been at many bedsides as people took their last breaths. In almost all cases, it was a peaceful process. My mother who died just a few months ago here at home with metastatic cancer died while I sat at her side. As worried as I was that she would be uncomfortable with shortness of breath (she had metastasis to the lungs), her passing was very peaceful. My own fear is that death by trauma where one would sustain terrible pain and/or suffering is the absolute worst that could happen. One of my fellow nursing students died shortly after our graduation from nursing school (this was 30 years ago) when her car was forced off the road and went over a cliff as she was driving down a mountain road. I had bad dreams about that for many years. Otherwise, death does not scare me. Even when I underwent surgery a few months ago, I told my sister, who was really upset for me, that she shouldn't worry. If I died while I was knocked out and under anesthesia I wouldn't even know what had happened. What better way to go, than to fall asleep and never wake up? I only ask that I just get to see the last episode of Heroes before I croak. :rollHey! We all gotta go sometime--that's a fact, Jack!