"on its deathbed" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It is typically used to describe a situation or thing that is in its final stages before ending. For example, "The company was on its deathbed, with its stock price hitting an all-time low."
He understands how it got that way, how it functioned during the few decades when it functioned, how and why it failed and how on its deathbed it produced such anomalous Communists as Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
"Instead of the North Sea being on its deathbed, it is at a healthy middle age," said Tom Botts, chief executive for European exploration and production at Royal Dutch/Shell.
A wireless industry analyst, Jeff Kagan, agreed: "The T-Mobile of today seems to be a different company than the one we saw lying on its deathbed just a few short years ago.
6.1 is already on its last leg – by the time this handset launches, we'd imagine that it'll be on its deathbed with 6.5 now leading the WinMo household.
But shares of most financial firms plummeted as one of Wall Street's most storied banks, Bear Stearns, lay on its deathbed and central bankers scrambled to stave off a devastating crisis of confidence in the financial world.
In his speech in Montgomery, Dr. King predicted that "segregation is on its deathbed in Alabama, and the only thing uncertain about it is how costly the segregationists and [Gov. George C.] Wallace will make the funeral".
The pendulum of power always needs somewhere to swing in a democracy, and the major party out of power is always, even on its apparent deathbed, ready to reach out its trembling hands and catch it.
On his deathbed one owner even ordered its burning so that it could accompany him into the afterlife.
My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold it to me".
It showed an old man lying on his deathbed.
It even has a drawing of him on his deathbed.
