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03.29.13
An old woman holding a cane.
Death is the last great mystery that all of us face. We don’t know when we will go or can really be sure what comes next. So there’s understandably a lot of fear and uncertainty that most of us feel around death, whether we’re thinking about ourselves or a loved one.
That’s why Julie McFadden's work is so important. As a palliative care nurse in the Los Angeles area, who has seen over a hundred people die, her TikTok videos shed light on the process to make us all a bit more comfortable with the inevitable.
McFadden is also the author of the bestseller, “Nothing to Fear.”
The nurse’s experience helping people in their final stages has given her a unique perspective on the process. In a recent video, she shared how she can see the first symptoms that someone is going to die a natural death about 6 months before they finally do.
Interestingly, she can determine that someone only has half a year left to live when most of us have no idea they have entered the final stages of life.
@hospicenursejulie Replying to @Mariah educating yourself about scary topics will help decrease fear. ✨Nothing to Fear ✨- my book- out june 11th #hospicenursejulie #hospicenurse #caregiversoftiktok #medicaltiktok #learnontiktok #nothingtofearbook
What are the symptoms of dying at the 6-month mark?
McFadden adds that people who are dying are usually placed in hospice care when the symptoms begin to appear around the 6-month mark.
"You will have very generalized symptoms. Those symptoms will usually be, one, you will be less social. So you'll be more introverted than extroverted," McFadden said. "Two, you will be sleeping a lot more. And three, you will be eating and drinking a lot less. Literally, everyone on hospice, I see this happen to."
A Ray of light over a mountain. via PIxbay/Pexels
What are the symptoms of dying at the 3-month mark?
You are going to notice more debility,” McFadden continues. “They will be staying in their house most of the time. It's going to be difficult getting up and just going to the bathroom. Again, sleeping a lot more and eating and drinking a lot less.”
What are the symptoms of dying at the 1-month mark?
Something usually begins to happen in the final month of someone’s life. They start to believe they are in contact with others they have lost. It’s like they are there to make the dying person feel comfortable with their final transition.
"Usually around the one month mark is when people will start seeing 'the unseen', they have the visioning. They'll be seeing dead relatives, dead loved ones, dead pets, old friends who have died,” McFadden said. “Again, not everyone — but many, many people will start seeing these things at around one month."
An angel with a trumpet.via PixaBay/Pexels
Angela Morrow, a registered nurse at Verywell Health, agrees that people in the final stage of life often hear from those who have passed before them. Morrow says we should refrain from correcting the patients when they share their stories of talking to people and pets who have died. "You might feel frustrated because you can't know for sure whether they're hallucinating, having a spiritual experience, or just getting confused. The uncertainty can be unsettling, but it's part of the process," Morrow writes.
At the end of the video, McFadden says that the most important factors palliative care nurses look at to determine the stage of death are eating, drinking and sleeping. “Most people, a few weeks out from death, will be sleeping more than they are awake. And they will be barely eating and barely drinking,” McFadden said.
In the end, hospice nurses “allow the body to be the guide” as they help their patients transition from life to death.
McFadden’s work has brought a lot of peace to her followers as they go through trying times. "My mom is in hospice right now and she’s currently, I think, hours or days from death. YourTikToks have helped me out tremendously," Deb wrote. "My grandma passed away in February, and she experienced all of this. this page brings me peace knowing everything she went through was natural," Jaida added.
"Thanks, Julie. I volunteer in a hospice end-of-life facility, and this helps educate the families. Your posts are wonderful," Grandma Nita wrote.
One of the things that makes death so scary is the number of unknowns surrounding the process. That’s why it’s so important that McFadden shares her stories of helping people to the next side. She shows that death is a natural process and that hospice nurses are here to help make the transition as peaceful as possible.
Evan Porter
The first time I sat down to write a fictional story (about 13 years ago), I wrote a screenplay jam-packed with stuff a 20-something year old guy thought was cool.
There was a bank heist gone wrong. Guns. Bad guys. Car chases. Explosions!
Since then I've become a father to two amazing girls, and for a long time my writing career was put on the backburner.
(Turns out, you suddenly have a lot less free time as a parent.)
But in early 2021, after many long months of COVID lockdown, I wanted to try writing something straight from the heart, something that better reflected who I am now — nostalgic, sentimental, both excited for and terrified of watching my girls grow up — and I wanted to try it as a novel.
So I came up with the idea of a bunch of dads trying (and hilariously struggling) to connect with their daughters at a weeklong summer camp retreat.
There was just one problem. 'Heartfelt novels by and about dudes' wasn't exactly a thriving literary genre.
There are plenty of books written by and mostly for men, of course.
But those are usually confined to genres like military or historical fiction, or SciFi. Basically, anything with weapons and/or spaceships and possibly murder.
Men also read somewhat prominently in biography and memoir.
But books about family and relationships and (gasp) love from a male perspective? That seemed to be fairly uncharted territory.
So where did that leave me and my idea to write a book that was funny and heartwarming and all about fatherhood?
I wasn't sure. But I knew the story I wanted to tell and I knew that I wanted to take great TV dads like Bandit from Bluey, Phil Dunphy from Modern Family, Carl Winslow from Family Matters, Alan Matthews from Boy Meets World and so many others — and see them represented on the page.
So I wrote the book anyway.
Holding an early draft of the manuscript in 2022Evan Porter
As I went along, I kept searching for more books like what I hoped to write. Generally, they were few and far between, but I was eventually heartened to find that they did exist.
Authors like Jonathan Tropper, Nick Hornby, Matthew Norman, and Richard Roper were doing amazing things in male-centered fiction that didn't involve guns and aliens, but rather focused on emotion and relationships and even romance.
Still, even with those guys blazing the trail, that didn't make things any easier when I started pitching my finished novel, Dad Camp, to literary agents.
A lot of them told me they just weren't sure what the market was for a book like mine. Who's going to read this? It seemed unfathomable that actual dads would read it, so surely it had to have crossover appeal to the childrens market, or it needed a strong romance element to draw in female readers.
Many even liked the story a lot but just didn't know how to pitch it to publishers.
It's easy to see why my book, Dad Camp, was a hard sell. Men just don't read in large enough numbers.
You can hardly go anywhere on the Internet without running into the "why don't men read" discourse.
That's because the facts are inescapable:
Around 80% of book sales come from women. Every study and survey and data set you can find shows that boys read less than girls starting in childhood and the gap only gets worse and worse as they get older.
Why don't men read more? Well, there are a lot of theories.
A lot of men report finding reading fiction to be a waste of time, that they have to be productive with their 'downtime' instead — which would explain why men are actually big readers of non-fiction, which is deemed more useful.
(Weirdly, that mindset doesn't seem to stop men from watching movies or television or spending tons of time gaming.)
Other theories say that men's brains just aren't wired as well for inhabiting the mind of different characters and empathizing with them.
And then there is the self-fulfilling prophecy of it all. Since men don't read, boys don't have as many good reading role models, and the cycle continues on and on.
The proven benefits of reading for men
Us dudes with our "linear thinking brains" like hard data, right? Well it's difficult to argue with the science behind reading fiction. It's extremely clear cut.
When you read fiction, you exercise your brain's Theory of Mind, or its ability to understand that other people are thinking and feelings and experiencing different things than you are.
People who read fiction frequently display more creativity, more empathy for others, and more skill in social relationships.
I'd like to see a non-fiction or self-help book that can achieve that.
And get this, some data even shows that readers live longer than non-readers!
So instead of spending a fortune on reducing your biological age and doing things like having young people's blood injected into your veins, just try picking up a $17.99 paperback novel.
In the end, I was lucky enough to find an agent and publisher that believed in Dad Camp as much as I did.
Seeing Dad Camp on shelves at the bookstore for the first time was a pretty special feelingEvan Porter
And I'm really excited that it's out there in the world finding its audience of, not just dads, but moms and daughters and anyone who knows or loves a dad.
One last point from my research that really stood out was that men are apparently extremely reluctant to pick up books from female authors — a perspective, you could argue, we desperately need!
I'd like to hope that, one day, my book could be something of a bridge, and show more men that it's actually good and fun to read about relationships and family and romance.
Once you cross that bridge, there's a whole world of amazing books and storytellers waiting for you — and the positive impact those stories have on your brain and well-being will be well worth the effort.
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