WAYS YOU COULD DIE- A 40-part series by Dr. Jimmy
As a physician, I am constantly asked about death. Most people who come to visit me are only concerned about one thing; are they going to die? A few years ago, I started trying to ease their fears and anxiety by reminding them that even though they will, in fact, be dead one day, it will likely be the result of heart disease or cancer or something fairly common. That didn’t seem to help. So I began to describe to them other, horrific ways in which it was possible for a person to meet their demise. By describing some very real, yet highly unlikely scenarios, it became clear it was a soothing experience for my patience. Considering all the horrible, painful and incredibly sad ways in which a person could die and then realizing how unlikely it was to happen to them seemed to make them feel better.
Since then, I have gone on to develop a series of circumstance and scenarios that have become part of every patient visit over the last two years. I am thrilled to share it with you now in a series of vignettes. I hope it brings you as much comfort as it has to my many patients.
#1 CABBAGE HEAD REPLACEMENT
A farmer could hunt you down and drive a pitchfork through your spleen. He could then drag you to his barn where he would reveal a small hatchet and a head of cabbage. He would remove your head from your body with a bone saw and then set your head on a bale of hay so that you could watch in horror as he placed the cabbage on top of your neck where your head used to be. Then he would draw a face on it and kiss it on the cheek. And the whole time all you could do is watch helplessly because at that point all you would be is a head without a body. Eventually, you would die of old age in the same barn because he would have never moved you or anything and he would have taken your cabbage-head body inside his home to live with him. You would just sit on a bale of hay for the next 38 years until you died.
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