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Topics: Health
Lucy Devine
Most of us don't really like to think too much about death, or dwell on what happens next.
After all, there's so much we don't really know about death. Is there really an afterlife? Is it painful?
It's a pretty scary concept. But now, one end-of-life doctor has spoken openly about death and claims it's 'nothing to be scared of' at all.
Palliative care physician Dr Christopher Kerr from New York has spent many years studying what happens when humans die.
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He says that patients often have dreams that help to 'validate' the life they have lived.
"We've all been harmed in one way or another for having lived, and we seem to get put back together through these experiences," he explained.
"And so the life you live gets validated, and inversely, the fear of death seems to lessen."
Speaking on the Next Level Soul podcast, Dr Kerr explained that one patient 'died peacefully' after a dream prompted him to make peace with his daughter.
Dr Kerr said: "We had a guy in his 40s who had spent most of his life in prison.
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"He had drug addictions, and he had head and 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 apologise.
"And after that he died peacefully."
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Dr Kerr has published several studies on the subject, having documented over 1,500 end-of-life events as part of his research.
Another case involved a man that took part in the Normandy invasion as a teenager, who has undiagnosed PTSD his whole life as he never sought help.
“He came into our unit at the end of his life... he was having such horrific experiences where he's seeing body parts and bloody water and screams and he couldn't rest. Patients need to be relaxed and accepting of their situation, to some extent, in order to die,” Dr Kerr said.
“You can't really die unless you can sleep. It's pretty hard to do because you just pass in sleep."
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But again, it took just one dream, which the medical expert explained: “He goes, ‘I had a great dream, where I relived the best day of my life,’ which was the day he received his discharge papers.
"He had a really good dream, presumably in Normandy, and a soldier who he didn't know approached him and said, ‘No, we're going to come get you’."
According to Dr Kerr, as the former soldier had come to peace with the fact 'that he had abandoned people', he was ready to die.
He later passed away in his sleep.