This I Believe as to How and Why Some Patients Refuse to Die

I believe the spirit of man, rather than being something ethereal we possess, is the life force within us. From a scientific standpoint, it is the force that actuates our mind and body and all the billions of cells to interact in a symphonic harmony we call life.

Like the fire burning on a match, as long as there is fuel and oxygen there is life. So to with us, as long as there is spirit sustained by breathing, we keep living. As a match running out of fuel into the mere glow of the final flicker of a flame, so too, the spirit or life force comes to an end.

But that is merely the end of the force that actuates the whole of the biological organism that we call alive. There are never flat lines as TV would have us believe. There is always a transient beat of the heart, twitch of a muscle, rarely a patient might sit up. What ever may come to be, the life force that made the patient a person is no more. It comes to an end.

Life doesn