End-of-life doctor reveals what people see before they die
A palliative care doctor who has spent years studying what happens at the end of our lives has shared what most people see before they die.
While most of us try to avoid thinking about the topic of death, Dr. Christopher Kerr, from Buffalo, New York, decided to make it his career as he followed in the footsteps of his family to become a physician.
After obtaining a Doctorate of Medicine and a PhD in Neurobiology, Kerr began to research the dreams and visions people experience as they near the end of their lives.
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During his time studying hospice patients, Kerr realized that end-of-life experiences differ greatly between adults and children, because children have less of an understanding of death in general.
As a result, they often find comfort in their final days through imagination - while adults tend to experience visions or memories that help them come to peace with the life they've lived.
Kerr offered one example of such a vision during an interview on the Next Level Soul podcast, when he explained: "We had a guy who is in his 40s, who had spent most of his life in prison. He had drug addictions and he had had neck cancer
"He was dreaming, he was joking, he was very jovial... and then he starts crying because he's having these horrible dreams [that] he's being stabbed by all the people he's hurt... and he breaks down.
"But then when he comes out of it, he asked to see a daughter that he wants to express his love towards, and apologize. And after that he died peacefully."
Kerr doesn't believe patients are 'denying the bad things and the painful things', but rather they're able to 'address them and use them in a way that's very interesting.'
He backed his claim with another story of a patient who had been involved in the invasion of Normandy when he was a teenager, and had developed PTSD.
Kerr described the man having 'horrific' visions after he arrived at the hospice which prevented him from getting any rest.
"You can't die really, unless you can sleep," Kerr explained. "It's pretty hard to do, because you just pass in sleep."
When the patient did manage to sleep, he woke up and described a 'great dream' where he relived getting his discharge papers.
"A soldier who he didn't know came up to him and said, "No, we're going to come get you'," Kerr said. After that, the man fell asleep and passed away.
"So that sense that he had abandoned people had gone full circle," Kerr continued.
Children, on the other hand, may not know anyone who has died previously, and so often see animals who assure them they're 'not alone', Kerr claimed.
"Children are creative and imaginative and can access that part of them," he said.
By researching end-of-life experiences, Kerr hopes to improve the quality of hospice care in Buffalo and beyond.
Emily Brown