Ten Seconds

Awhile ago Madge wrote a blog about anxiety and asked her readers if they feared death. Several people answered that while they didn't fear BEING dead…the possibilities of HOW they might die did frighten them.

Drowning. Fire. Falling. Congestive heart failure on the royal thrown.  You  know. The usuals.

But that doesn't really worry me, for two reasons. One:  We don't have much control over that. Well. A little. Obviously I'm shooting for organ failure due to lung cancer but one can't be certain in these matters.  Two: Who the fuck cares HOW it happens?

It's DEATH!!! *terror!*  (yes My ego IS that big!)

So yeah. DEATH. (heavy, I know) It's not that I'm MUCH afraid of being dead. Most of the evidence seems to point to a ceasing of being. So. You won't KNOW you're dead. That's not very scary. I mean it is but it will only be scary until it happens. And then it won't be anything. And if it is SOMETHING most accounts point to it being all nice and peaceful despite the fact that none of your dead relatives bothers to bring you a pair of ray bans to deal with the stunning bright light. Nothing to fear about THAT.

People are missing the scary part! The scary part is the DYING.

The scary part of dying is this; assuming you're not killed immediately with some sort of blunt force trauma inflicted on the brain stem… and even then there's doubt about immediate loss of brain activity but we won't get into that here what with there being no hard proof….. So unless you're lucky enough to be shot or have a piano land on you unexpectedly it's likely the old lack of oxygen to the brain that's REALLY going to get you.

So what? I'll tell you so what. TEN SECONDS. Give or take. That's how long until you lose consciousness. We call it that big word when really we mean; That's when you lose YOU.

TEN SECONDS.


That's a long time.


One


Two


Three


Four


Five


Six


Seven


Eight


Nine


Ten


Yeah. THAT long. That's longer than the Dylan guy from 90210 had to stay on that bucking thing in that one movie. I could barely take it in movie time!

 Then your brain cells begin to deteriorate. You can still be revived within four minutes or so with less damage than you inflicted yourself  every damn weekend in your early twenties give or take a cell or two but after THAT the cells begin killing themselves off in a mass suicide. That's right. You DECIDE to die.  The suspense KILLS YOU!!!

So what if we can decide NOT to? Apparently somebody is working on it. They're working on a drug to at least slow down that process in the cells, for hours or even days. I assume to give doctors longer to fix you before there's nothing left in the brain to fix. The rest of the body does better because it's cells have a back-up plan to break shit down and get rid of it. Has to do with why we get muscle pain after lack of oxygen in a work-out. But don't listen to me.. There's a whole internet to read smart people about important things such as cell function.

I'm just wondering.. What do you suppose YOU will be thinking during YOUR ten seconds.

As for me I have my money on mad panic, frantic holding on, and a shit ton of angry resentment.  But that's just me.