Some people take the view that everyone effectively starts to die from the day they are born. The reality of course is that it is never known exactly when someone is going to die from a life-threatening disease. Taking the approach of equating terminal care with "dying", some medical organisations define someone as being terminally ill when it is expected that there is only a short period of time, perhaps a few days or weeks, or at most a month or two, before the person is expected to die.