Sheridan
Appearances
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
Well, I was just going to say, Clarence, you're completely right. The medicalization of death and how much farther we've gone in just advancements in medicine, even in the last 100 years, people are dying differently. People used to die a lot younger of illnesses that I think it was the average age of workers was like 24 was when they would die. Obviously, it's much, much later on now.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
So as that shifted, and people realize that medicine is keeping us alive longer, it's a lot easier to put it put the thought of death out of our minds and somewhere in the abstract future, not as it being a finite point in all of our lives. And also there's taboos on conversations about death. We don't use like we've been talking about terms like, oh, they died.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
We say, oh, they passed on or they passed away. We avoid we use euphemisms and we avoid the blunt truth of it, which is really doing us a disservice. because people aren't being realistic.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
And then we also, like you said, segregate the dying from the rest of society in homes, like hospice care or nursing homes, even though a majority of people say they want to die in their own house with their loved ones around. So there's a disconnect between what people actually want when they die and what our society is doing.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
And I think that that's one of the big reasons people are afraid of death. It's because people aren't dying how they actually want to die. We're not talking about it and we're pushing people away. It's just not a good combination right now.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
Just a note on donation and having plans for that, if that is something you choose or you are interested in. I just went through this process as I lost my aunt this summer to a fairly traumatic situation. She had a thyroid issue and she was in the hospital, in the ICU. She was doing very well after her surgery and then she was less monitored. She ended up aspirating and then having a heart attack.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
They revived her, but she had no brain activity. So while she was technically alive, she was deemed brain dead or in a permanent vegetative state. These situations are something that most people never anticipate being in in their life. And I found myself in this situation and We were presented with whether or not we wanted to donate her organs because she still had a perfectly fine set of organs.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
You can even donate your skin or your retinas can go to several people. So you can give with the gift of your organs, you can give the gift of eyesight. of skin to children who have issues with their skin. Like there are so many different ways that you can donate.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
And this is something that you should discuss with your family and indicate either on your driver's license or in paperwork that you have prepared ahead of time. But even if you think this will not happen to you, it is a possibility. It happens more often than you would think. And it is something to be prepared for. It is very, very tragic in that situation. There's no good way to go about it.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
um but it is something to keep in mind that not all death is just dying uh death can look like brain death death can look like a lot of things um so just be prepared for pretty much anything because we never know i know that's that's a that's a subject that we could have as a show is on organ donation yeah actually actually you know human works with life source which is there you go yeah yeah that's exactly who we used was life source and they were fantastic they were a
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
fabulous company to work with. They made me and my family very comfortable. They gave us a little heartbeat in a bottle, which was really, really sweet. They just really handled it with grace. Without them, I don't think we would have been able to handle the process.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
My last little thought, I think that I've learned a lot from death. I've been around death a lot in my life, unfortunately. And it's something that I've really had to dwell on for the good or bad. But some of the good things that I think I've started to see is Take an inventory of your life. After someone dies, you usually have this moment of reflection. Take an inventory of your own life.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
Think about how you're spending your time, who you're spending your time with. Are you working yourself to the bone? Are you not seeing your family, your loved ones enough? Are you not taking your dog on enough walks? Think about what you really, really want. And if you don't like the answer, you need to change it now. You cannot wait until you have more time or more resources or whatever it is.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
You need to start the process now. It's a slow process, but you will find your life to be much more rewarding if you continue to take inventory on things like this and be really when you come to the time where you know Death is coming sooner probably than later. You want to be happy with the decisions that you have made in your life and you don't want to have any loose ends.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
So now is the time, no matter how young or old or anything in between you are, now is always the time to start thinking about that.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
Yeah, I wanted to circle back to what Clarence was saying earlier about how a lot of people kind of, think that they're immortal and don't have plans necessarily for dying. But it sounds like Clarence does have some sort of a plan. And I think it's important for everybody, even I'm only 24.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
But I have a plan for when I die, because like we've been talking about, it's one of the only certainties in life. And not having a plan only further burdens the people that you leave behind. So just having a plan, like what you want, like your final arrangements is a really important thing.
Health Chatter
Life Lessons About Death
having a will, um, a living trust, having beneficiaries, having a plan, even though it's not easy to think about is so important for both making sure your wishes are granted, but easing the pain on the people that are left with this burden.
Health Chatter
The Future and Vision of Public Health Education
Yeah, so I did not get a public health degree from the University of Minnesota for my undergrad, but it was my minor. And I was a pre-med, and I just had always thought I was going to go medical school, pharmaceuticals maybe. And as we learned how to solve individual problems, I realized there were a lot more systemic problems and that more problems could be fixed upstream.
Health Chatter
The Future and Vision of Public Health Education
And that is really what ignited my passion for public health. I'd already dabbled a little bit in high school. I used to do anti-tobacco smoking campaigns in high school, which really tells you I was probably set up for this since the beginning. But I really felt like I found my people when I was having these like bigger level systemic changes, creating
Health Chatter
The Future and Vision of Public Health Education
You know, the solutions that actually solve really big problems. That's what really lit my soul on fire. So I was wondering what brought you and like lit your soul on fire in regards to public health.