php db/exit question

Hi, I have problems in mod_php3 when communicating in oracle. Occasionally the child will lose it's connection to oracle and not re-establish it - needless to say this causes problems and makes me keep the child life very low (via MaxRequests) as a precaution. I'm happy with the solution that mod_perl provides - calling exit in the script causes the child itself to exit. This both guarantees that my connection to oracle will be properly closed and that a new connection will be promptly initiated. Is there a way to do a similair thing in php - exit in such a way as to cause the apache child to purposefully die as well? Thanks, George