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Saturday, July 13, 2013

The day the dead don't die

I thought that would be a neat name for a book.  I thought of that after spending an hours of performing advanced life support on an elderly man.  We could barely keep his heart going with our medicine and artificial breathing, so when the family said it was time to quit, the man continued to live. His heart rate increased, and his blood pressure increased, and he continued to breathe. Instead of dying, he did not die. He was evidentlyl brain dead, but his body did not die. He lived this way for another 13 hours, dying at precisely the tone of the church bell at midnight.

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