My girlfriend is a urologist, and once found this in a patient when she was assisting a surgeon as a trainee:
The patient had been rushed in with extreme pain in his abdomen and was feeling very sick. The doctors had opened him up as soon as they could, not knowing what to expect.
But once they saw his colon, they knew exactly what it was.
Bowel infarction — also known as “gangrenous bowel” or “necrotic bowel.” A bad case.
The patient’s bowel was dead.
The only thing they could do was close the patient, and send him back to intensive care — there was no time left to start up palliative sedation.
He died a couple of hours later.
SOURCES: Phone Gallery.