The medical profession spend a long time (rightly) ruminating on death. To die is, unfortunately, a natural consequence of being born: all doctors can hope to d

The medical profession spend a long time (rightly) ruminating on death. To die is, unfortunately, a natural consequence of being born: all doctors can hope to do is change the order around a little bit here and there. Yet that does not mean that the practice of medicine is pointless, nor does it mean that death has to be accepted. One of the main medical training "shorthand" books in this country, the oxford handbook of medical sciences, affectionately known as 'prawn cocktail' owing to the similar colour of its binding and a packet of Walkers' [EN-US: Lays] crisps, simply has two double-page spreads on the subject: "death of a parent" and then, following that, "death of a child". No mention is ever made of "death of yourself". I think that doctors spend a long time subconsciously thinking about this subject, and knowing full well that there are some conditions -- like gastro-oesphageal reflux disorder, let's say -- where it is overwhelmingly like that, with the help of the last few decades of technology, be something that you die with, and not of. The difference between refusing treatment may be pain initially, and a preposition to get cancer of the oesophagus later on. Then there are other conditions that are awful death sentences, and have been since time immemorial, diagnoses where a good outcome changes dying at home in four months to dying in a hospital in eight. When I received a spinal injury following trauma, one of my colleagues (a cardiologist specialising in heart failure and transplant, both conditions where unfortunately a sizeable proportion of patients do not survive a long time) simply said to me: "well, this is life -- you're born, bad things happen, and then you die". I found it oddly comforting, and had absolutely no qualms about taking the next dose of morphine...