Not sleeping, dying

Finally some work! Last friday I was called in to do a short shift in the oncology ward of a local private hospital. I've not come across death a lot in my life (haha) but on this ward there were two patients who were in palliative care and obviously very close to the end. In some ways it was quite confronting, but conversely I could also see why some nurses would choose to work in palliative care, helping to make peoples last months and days as tolerable as possible. I was asked to do oral hygiene on one of these patients as apparently one of the consequences of the body starting to fail is a painfully dry mouth. I went into the patient's room and saw that he was asleep. I went back to the RN and said "he's asleep, do you want me to wake him for this?" to which she replied "he's not asleep, he's unconscious." Oh.