What happens to the human body during a terminal illness?
In: Biology
That depends on said terminal illness.
The most common terminal illness the laymen have understanding is cancer. Cancer originates from cells in a specific organ. Cancer is terminal when either it originates on a vital organ and makes this vital organ to work so badly, when it compresses vital organ, or when it spreads (metastasis) to vital organs and these metastasis are enough to impair function of said organ.
Terminal heart illness is when heart cannot provide enough output to the other organs or when it has such slow output that blood accumulates in organs and making said organ swollen to the point it cannot work properly – lungs, kidney or liver – and even meds are not enough to make the heart improve enough.
Terminal lung illness is when lung cannot provide enough oxygen even when said person is on oxygen therapy or when lung immune function is so low that it eventually succumbs to drug-resistant pneumonia.
Millions of people live with terminal kidney disease with dialysis. Dialysis, however, is an agressive procedure, prone to blood infections, rapid electrolyte imbalance and systemic inflammation that highly increases chances of myocardial infarction.
It depends on the illness. But generally something will eventually damage one or more vital organs to the point where they’re no longer functional enough to keep the body going, and once that happens other organs will start to fail, and at some point the combination of all of that keeps the brain from getting enough oxygen to continue functioning and the person dies.
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