In the face of our own inevitably mortality, the most many of us hope to ask for is that when our time comes, we transition from this world to whatever awaits us in a peaceful, uneventful manner.
The idea of passing painlessly away in our sleep surrounded by loved ones softens the blow to some degree, even if probability suggests that only a small percentage of us will actually be afforded that eventuality.
The rather morbid truth of the matter is that accidents, illness, and the intentional malice of others account for a large number of deaths every day. Put simply, the chances are we won’t get to pick our end, nor the circumstances surrounding it.
On the other hand, if we’re looking at it from a glass-half-full perspective, there are ways to die and there are ways to die. Namely, that no matter what befalls you before you shuffle off this mortal coil, there’s a very high likelihood that it won’t be as traumatic or painful as the deaths suffered by certain others.
35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi is considered by many to have the unfortunate distinction of having endured one of the most excruciating deaths ever recorded.
A nuclear plant worker employed at a nuclear fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan in September 1999, he was stood close to a processing tank that was filled with too much uranium.
The result was an uncontrolled nuclear reaction that had devastating consequences.
As a result of his proximity to the processing tank, Ouchi was reportedly exposed to 17,000 millisieverts of radiation, the equivalent of 200,000 X-rays.
For a bit of perspective, that’s comfortably the highest dose of radiation experienced by a human in recorded history, 850 times the safe annual dose for those working at nuclear plants. It was also 140 times what the residents of Chernobyl were said to be exposed to following the 1986 disaster.
Ouchi survived the initial exposure but quickly fell violently ill. He was rushed to hospital, where it was assumed he would die within days; the 35-year-old’s white blood cell count had been completely eradicated by the radiation, leaving him with no immune system.
At the University of Tokyo Hospital, Ouchi suffered for 83 days as doctors desperately tried to find experimental treatments and medicines that would potentially save his life.
Yet since the exposure to such extreme levels of radiation had stripped the plant worker’s body of the ability to grow new cells, his condition rapidly deteriorated. As per reports, his skin peeled away, his eyelids fell off, and his blood vessels collapsed.
Ouchi was kept on a ventilator as fluids leaked from his exposed tissue and pooled in his lungs. Meanwhile, his digestive system shut down entirely, leaving him in agonizing pain, and though countless surgeries, skin grafts, and stem cell transfusions were attempted, his body simply could not heal.
Two months after being taken to hospital, Ouchi’s heart stopped beating. Doctors controversially resuscitated him, despite having no way of effectively treating him.
Eventually, the 35-year-old pleaded with doctors to stop trying to save him, muttering: “I can’t take it anymore. I am not a guinea pig.”
Ouchi ultimately died on December 21, 1999, almost three months after the horrifying accident. His official cause of death was listed as multiple organ failure.
