When a terminal patient seems to recover briefly just before dying in the coming days. A NYT article with examples. So far unexplained. And the rest of the article won't either, so feel free to stop here.
This actually happened to my dad. He had pneumonitis, reading for 2-3 days about 65% of oxygen saturation with full supply of oxygen through a mask. Then it started improving, reading close to 80% by the time we left the hospital that night. The next day in the morning he was sitting on his bed eating his breakfast and the mask by the side of his face. The nurse later in the day saw the oxygen saturation again around 65% and made a comment "I knew there had to be something wrong, the nurse in the morning told me an unbelievable good number...". This was not a continuous monitor so we couldn't see the readings and she didn't tell us what the other nurse had read, but I believe that they saw more than 90% that morning when he was doing fine. The next day he died :_(
As the article explains, this is not particular to a given disease and actually it happens with other ones (stroke, dementia, brain cancer, heart disease, colon cancer...). The explanations seem to try to solve the mystery individually for each disease but what if the body had a powerful universal mechanism to try to fight death? Even if it was an individual one, what if we could extend it or replicate it? Hence my interest... As usual, will post as I learn...
Cheers!
PS.: I can't believe no one has done any serious research on this.
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