Opinion – Suzana Herculano-Houzel: Death is a process

The vet came to my house to assist Neguinho, the long gray mutt my parents rescued from the streets ten years ago. On my previous visit, Neguinho was already full of tumors and having difficulty getting up on his own, but he still walked, went alone to sunbathe in his favorite corner on the lawn, and came to stay under the table where we sat to play cards and chat — where he only got up again with the help of the technique that my father developed for him.

But this time, Neguinho didn’t get up anymore. Not even to poop or pee. He drank water and ate something if placed in front of him. The vet took blood and gave the diagnosis: kidney and liver failure. Neguinho was hospitalized the next day for an ultrasound that found tumors in the bladder and spleen. The doctors only said that the situation was very serious. I was the one who suggested euthanasia.

You have to know how to say enough. Death comes to everyone who lives—bacteria included, killed in the process of cell division that turns one into two, just as science fiction teleportation destroys a body here to recreate it far away. If life is the process of self-organization of biological systems at the expense of a chain of energy and matter transfer, called “metabolism”, dying is the process of gradual disorganization when metabolism ceases, except in cases of sudden disintegration by annihilation of the structure. of the body.

Life is a self-organized and self-sustaining imbalance, transmitted directly from the already living cells of the parents and maintained at the expense of the energy that circulates through the blood. Death is balance—and getting to that balance is a whole process.

With kidney and liver failure plus severe muscle atrophy, Neguinho was already dying. To let him finish dying naturally, which exempts human brains from the feeling of guilt when they become agents of the final balance of others, was to risk letting him die alone, and after much more suffering, which for me is selfish and immoral when not necessary.

My parents agreed and signed the authorization, while I asked the vet to accompany him and stay with Neguinho during the process. I wish it had happened at home so my parents could have bathed him one last time, which he liked, but it was too late.

I soothed Neguinho by caressing him behind the ears and on the muzzle while he received a large dose of propofol, my nose pressed to his. Feeling him relax under the anesthesia was a relief. With his eyes already closed, pain free, and with my hand on his chest, I felt the intravenous potassium chloride stop his heart.

But death is a process, and there was still life, even if anesthetized, in his brain, which still made the brain breathe a few minutes. Without circulation, however, oxygenated blood no longer reaches the brainstem, and as more neurons reach equilibrium and cease their activity, breathing slows and weakens. There are fewer and fewer neurons still capable of organizing one more inspiration, until it stops. And stopped.

I asked the vet for a minute and continued caressing Neguinho until I no longer thought it possible that there was still Neguinho in his brain. I removed her necklace, which my mother wanted to keep, and thanked the vets for being so kind as to let me be there. For me, watching Neguinho die and, above all, witnessing him was my way of showing respect and reverence for his life.