The article reflects on the author's painful experience of losing their mother to cancer. As they navigated their final days together, a crucial insight about breathing patterns before death from a nurse proved invaluable. It allowed the family to be present, offering love and comfort, as they witnessed her passing. The author wishes they had been informed of more signs of impending death earlier, emphasizing that while each death is unique, learning common signs can ease the burden on families during this profound and difficult time.
There are often changes to someone's breathing shortly before death: alternations between periods of shallow breathing, deeper rapid breaths and sometimes substantial pauses known as Cheyne-Stokes breathing.
Being with her in the months, days and hours up to her death from cancer was the hardest thing I have ever done. It also felt like the most important.
I felt like a stray root of some ancient tree that had accidentally broken out of the earth and into foreign air wholly unprepared for the strange world I now found myself in.
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