Matt Morgan: An ordinary death

The palliative care physician and author Kathryn Mannix described the death of Queen Elizabeth II sadly and beautifully on Twitter last week.1 She wrote about how the Queen’s gradual adaptation to frailty in recent years, involving less travel and more rest, was an inherent part of mortality—or “ordinary dying,” as she put it. While media outlets have concentrated on the dramatic moment of the Queen’s death, Mannix pulls us away from the screens to consider the process behind the event.In the intensive care unit we increasingly meet frail, older patients who have been referred to us for multiorgan support for “reversible” problems. These may include severe infections, support after major bowel surgery, or serious strokes. We are asked to consider the event of the patient’s illness as something that could be fixed with drugs, machines, nursing care, and, most importantly, time.And often they are right. The problem may indeed have…
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