On Last Wills, DNRs, Organ Donation after Death
In my culture, urging others to prepare a last will or testament or prepare for a disaster is not taken very likely.
This is because majority of the people believe in superstitions and the supernatural, urging someone to make a last will while they are fit and healthy sounds like you are wishing for something bad to happen to them.
It’s okay to prepare for births and celebrations but God forbid that one prepares for death.
This is quite illogical since both birth and death are natural occurrences in life.
My Experience
I had this patient a few years back who had begged her children while on her terminal death bed to let her go.
She had a lived great and fulfilled life, this was evident by the throngs of relatives that filed in to see her day in day out.
She was a 5th generation matriarch. But the pain of cancer is not a joke in any society. All though they remained hopefully, she was in dire suffering and it was one complication after the other.
I was one of the most junior doctors on the team the night she died. The Do not resuscitate order was a word of mouth instruction from both the patient and the eldest of the family.
They were no forms to fill because the hospital had never really had such an incident before, to show you how much we are willing to hang on to the faintest hope.
I have seen less than 5 do not resuscitate cases in my life as a medical practitioner in Nigeria — not good enough.
We need to start talking about death and plans for death.
I have seen family members withhold the information from their loved one about their poor prognosis and impending death.
The medical community in the developing countries needs to foster this very difficult conversation. Preparing for death in hospitals. Preparing patients and loved ones for death.
We must give people a chance to say their last good byes and prepare for what is.
The first time this matter of preparing last testaments was brought to my attention was during an ethics class in University.
A Japanese class mate had brought out her drivers license then to show me that, should she ever die or be involved in accident, she had willed for her body to be donated to medicine.
That was a wow moment.
First of all I didn’t know that it was possible to make that decision through such a method.
Secondly, I thought she had such a big heart to be able to take such a decision at such a young age.
We do not have an organ donor registry in Nigeria, I do not know of any.
Imagine if we began to think that although death is inevitable, someone might live because of the death of another.
Many Nigerians may not be willing to donate a body part but we need to begin to raise awareness that this is possible. We need to engage students, parents, communities, religious bodies, that death is not always the end.
That in dying, one can still do a lot of good if they so will. That people’s hearts and eyes and kidneys can live on long after they are gone.
Why do we prepare for birth but not Death?
Why do we expect good news but not anticipate sad news?
If I told you I had all the answers I would be lying.
The average Nigerian is a very hopeful human being. The notion of hope is that things are gonna be better.
Death is not seen in continuum but seen as a terminating event and so it is difficult to teach humans to anticipate death.
Birth and death are natural happenings.
Good news and bad news will always be around.
We must not be too optimistic nor too pessimistic, in-between the two is a healthy balance of realism.
The Preacher’s Words
Let us be reminded by these words of the preacher quoted from Ecclesiastes 3:1–8
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”
Hope is good but it is foolishness to think that only good things and desirable happy events will happen to us.
Imagine if coummunities, hospitals and governments had contingency plans for epidemics and pandemics.
We as humans need to prepare for weak and sad days, we must shore up strength and resources for the undesirable.
If we take conscious effort to prepare for less desirable events the shock of bad news will be cushioned and not as bad as when it happens.
“Whatever is, has already been”
Nothing is new under the sun, what is happening or will happen is what has happened before.
Believe it or not, most of the stories written here on medium have been written before.
It is a fallacy to think that bad/sad things will not happen to us, so what can we do.
What can We do?
- Learn to cherish every moment. Enjoy the good and the plentiful when it comes.
- Learn to shore up strength for the future. If you have surplus money, save it or invest it. For example, If you have more time to write, by all means write for tomorrow your time might be taken up by something else.
- Empathize with others. Mourn with those who mourn. Pray for those in war torn areas. For me, empathy means that I realize that whatever bad is happening to someone else could also happen to me.Big girls and boys also cry.
- Learn Sobriety. Take moments to reflect and introspect. Calm down and reanalyze where you might be falling short. Have moments where your mind is clear and steady.
- Plan for the Future. This is especially if you have loved ones, depending on you or not. The same way we have plans for when desires are met, have a contingency plan for when things go not according to plan.
Hi, I’m Nguper. I write about relationships, life lessons, poetry and health issues. To see my stories in your feed, I’d love for you to follow me (Terngu)
