Open Thread - Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Good morning, 99%'ers! I am going to be traveling today, so I will not be covering this in real time. Please feel free to talk about whatever you wish.

My husband's 98 year old aunt died one week ago. She had been ready to go for about two years and died peacefully in her sleep early Wednesday morning. We all should be so lucky.

She was originally from Virginia but after her husband died, she moved to Florida to be near her sister who is my husband's mother. Her funeral was yesterday which necessitated our having to leave NC sooner than anticipated. I love to decorate for Christmas and we decided to simply leave the inside decorations up until we return to NC in the spring. So sometime in late March or early April, I will be taking down Christmas decorations.

My husband has been handling his aunt's affairs for years and that included making sure that her funeral and burial were done in accordance with her wishes. She was a devout Catholic and even though no one else in the family is Catholic, we made sure that the service will be done as she wished. She also wanted to be buried in Virginia, so after Christmas, the family will make the trek to Virginia for her graveside service. There is just one kink in this. My husband's aunt was terrified of flying and did not want her body sent back to Virginia on an airplane. I know, she is already dead, but she still did not want to fly to her final resting place. So we have hired a hearse and driver to drive her body back to Virginia.

Within the last week and a half, three people I have known have died of natural causes. It seems as though a lot of people die around the holidays and statistics support that as a fact. This is something that funeral directors and florists have known for years. In fact, you have a greater chance of dying on Christmas Day than any other day of the year.

The fact that more people die on Christmas, as well as the day after Christmas, and New Year’s Day is a long-studied phenomenon. Exactly why it occurs is still not precisely known, though researchers continue to try to pinpoint the cause, examining everything from personal stress, to the levels of staffing in hospitals, to people’s delay in seeking medical treatment.

A 2010 study from one of the world’s experts on death trends, sociology professor David Phillips, of the University of California at San Diego, looked at 57.5 million U.S. death certificates from 1979 to 2004.

It found that more people — 42,325 more — died of natural causes in the two weeks around Christmas and New Years than would normally be expected, even given a normal increase in deaths during winter. It also found significant spikes in dead on arrival deaths at hospitals and emergency room deaths on Dec. 25, Dec. 26 and Jan. 1.

A number of studies have been done in order to try to determine why the rate of natural deaths rises around the Christmas/New Year season. None of these studies has found a single link between the rise of natural deaths during this time and the cause of death, but the rise is significant.

Phillips said that the team’s analysis of 57.5 million death certificates shows that the chance of dying during the holiday period increases “somewhere between 3% and 9% depending on the demographic group you look at, and between 1% and 10%, depending on the cause of death analyzed.”

While many people have speculated that the rise in natural deaths is caused by the stress of the holiday period, it must be noted that December is the month that has the lowest rate of deaths by suicide. This anomaly appears to rule out linkage to stress.

Despite popular belief, the suicide rate doesn't spike at the holidays. In fact, the suicide rate in December is at its lowest -- it peaks in spring and fall. The homicide rate also goes down for the holidays.

In addition, the spike in deaths from Alzheimer's peaks in a similar manner to deaths due to cardiac disease. Since most Alzheimer's patients have little of no awareness of their surroundings in the late stages of the disease, this also appears to rule out stress as a cause for the spike in deaths around the holiday season.

Phillips and his team looked at the number of deaths among the Alzheimer's population, theorizing they may be less aware of the holidays and the stress it can trigger.

If stress were solely to blame, he figured, their deaths wouldn't spike on Christmas or New Year's. But sure enough, he found cardiac deaths were slightly higher at the holidays when Alzheimer's was listed as a secondary cause of death.

The current theory for why deaths from natural causes spike over the holidays may have more to do with lack of access to care and decreased levels of staffing at hospitals during this time period.

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Even Ted Cruz can see the truth. Why can't Hillary fans?

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mimi's picture

told me, that you can understand to which "tribe" you belong to, by the choice you make for your burial place.
It's a very stressful thing to make up your mind where you want to be buried for all those people, who are somewhat displaced, immigrants, expats, or otherwise living in various diaspora-like locations. I couldn't quite believe it back then or let's say I found it quite interesting and couldn't imagine why that would be a big deal to decide. Today I know.

My distant relative, who was talking about it way back, had intimate knowledge with a community of Germans in Spain, people who had decided to retire in Spain and apparently engaged in a lively German expat community over there. He was very engaged in the Lutheran Protestant Church of Germany and as such "took care of the German souls" in that Spanish German community. It was a very stressful thing for those elderly to decide where they wanted to be buried, in Germany or Spain. They had come to love their new home in Spain, but not broken off relations to Germany as well. Today I find it almost funny, because, heh, Spain and Germany is a trip like Washington DC to Oklahoma City, no big deal, not really "far away from home", you can make the trip by car or train. Talking about crossing Oceans and continents and cultures across the globe, that's a bit different.

In my immediate family this "stress" factor became more of an emotional burden for some.

oh .... so many things come up to my mind and I think I should not write them out here. It's all in my imagination though.

Just saying, gulfgal, your reflections of where people want to be buried and why people die at Christmas day more often, made me think about this little side-OT-issue. I don't know where I want to be buried. But it's necessary to know so that the ones you leave behind, if you have them, know how to handle the burial. I think Christmas (at least for very sentimental heavily somber celebrating Germans), is a time, where you are supposed to be "with your family and friends" and people start to reflect on their lives. I guess a couple of them get rather lonely and depressed and that's why they die more often on Christmas day. For some Christmas time in Germany became so "loaded and heavy" that they try everything to run away from it. But somehow that doesn't seem to work for real most of the time.

Anyhow, just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas. But for all those who feel "rat-fucked" over Christmas, I have my special Christmas greetings from these folks:
Smile
[video:https://youtu.be/1q58DQa0Mtw]
[video:https://youtu.be/pbHOj6kdG9U]
[video:https://youtu.be/H1O_vtfX1sY]
[video:https://youtu.be/4HxrNYBx3l0]
[video:https://youtu.be/DuKp-ctLGI4]
[video:https://youtu.be/jrp2UgbYJn4]

Happy Holidays and many bananas for my beloved HeroRATs (...the EB folks among them included). BTW which video do you like best, I included some I don't like THAT much, but for rat's sake, you deserve all of them.

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Shahryar's picture

the plan for today is to finish Christmas shopping. Well...start and finish. The brilliant shaz asked last night "what kind of %&*^&( holiday is it where you have to buy presents for people?"

I think I'd prefer just decorating the tree because that's closer to the Celtic solstice celebration. We'll have a small Christmas dinner here, just six. That's plenty though. I had a little sticker shock last night when the turkey came to $46.

I guess I'll do tomorrow's OT. Shaz agreed to do Thursdays but has been busy so I've taken it over for now. She can have it back any time she wants!

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