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This sounds insane to say, if you haven't lived with a parent or family member with dementia, but if that happens to me I really hope I have the nerve to kill m

This sounds insane to say, if you haven't lived with a parent or family member with dementia, but if that happens to me I really hope I have the nerve to kill myself.

linkmotif 8y ago
Not insane at all. I’m with you on this. I grew up with my grandma, who lived with my family. She was a cool, collected, highly stable person who worked her whole life as a doctor. I guess this sounds really heavy thinking about it now, but it didn’t seem so at the time when she told me once when I was a teenager that if she ever had dimentia that I should kill her somehow. She was of course to some extent trying to articulate her feelings on the severity of the condition, but I did get the concrete sense that she was also being literally serious. Fortunately she got cancer around the same time she got dimentia, because I’m not sure I could have done it.
- creep 8y ago
  I have told my partner that if I get dementia, I would like to die. I didn't say he should kill me, but I hope that he wouldn't have to.
  - Pica_soO 8y ago
    In the end stages, the body looses the ability to regulate temperature. Strange idea though, can one speed up dementia? Accelerate it?
    - adrianN 8y ago
      There are a lot more humane methods to kill.
      - creep 8y ago
        Jesus, thank you haha.
canada_dry 8y ago
I fervently believe its just a matter of time (hopefully the next 10 yrs) til we add "end-of-living power of attorney" to the list of documents that govern how we get old. This legal document would lay out instructions to implement assisted suicide upon reaching a (difficult I know) threshold of mental/physical impairment. With the exponentially increasing health care burden that aging baby boomers are inflicting on gov't purse strings it shouldn't receive much resistance.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  This gets insanely complicated legally and ethically, because there has to be independent proof of loss of mental competence (which happens when...?) - but paradoxically, assisted suicide legislation to date assumes a person is competent to make the decision for themselves. Clearly both can't be true. So at best you end up in a brief window where someone can be assumed to be competent enough to understand their situation while also understanding that the competence may disappear in the near future - possibly by the time they've travelled to a clinic - and someone else will be making a life-ending decision on their behalf. There also has to be no suspicion that anyone will benefit from accelerating the suicide option - which is not always as straightforward as it sounds, and would ideally have to be investigated explicitly on a case by case basis. My mother had middle-stage Alzheimer's at 90, although - perhaps mercifully - cancer killed her before Alz could. We had issues with power of attorney, because she was very clear she wanted to go home and live on her own, and it was absolutely obvious that she wasn't able to do so without endangering herself. Aside from the emotional heartbreak of having to tell someone over and over every time you meet that they can't have something they really want - because she couldn't remember a conversation from minute to minute, never mind day to day or week to week - there were also a formal legal process involving two oversight bodies (local services, and the national Court of Protection) to make sure that keeping her in a home against her will was actually in her interests. It would have been far harder if she'd left a living will saying "Please make arrangements for assisted suicide when it gets to this stage" and then apparently changed her mind as the disease progressed to the point where there was no possibility at all of mental competence.
- jopsen 8y ago
  Moreover many of us have seen people slowly disappear to Alzheimer.

This sounds insane to say, if you haven't lived with a parent or family member with dementia, but if that happens to me I really hope I have the nerve to kill myself.

linkmotif 8y ago

Not insane at all. I’m with you on this. I grew up with my grandma, who lived with my family. She was a cool, collected, highly stable person who worked her whole life as a doctor. I guess this sounds really heavy thinking about it now, but it didn’t seem so at the time when she told me once when I was a teenager that if she ever had dimentia that I should kill her somehow. She was of course to some extent trying to articulate her feelings on the severity of the condition, but I did get the concrete sense that she was also being literally serious. Fortunately she got cancer around the same time she got dimentia, because I’m not sure I could have done it.

creep 8y ago
I have told my partner that if I get dementia, I would like to die. I didn't say he should kill me, but I hope that he wouldn't have to.
- Pica_soO 8y ago
  In the end stages, the body looses the ability to regulate temperature. Strange idea though, can one speed up dementia? Accelerate it?
  - adrianN 8y ago
    There are a lot more humane methods to kill.
    - creep 8y ago
      Jesus, thank you haha.

canada_dry 8y ago

I fervently believe its just a matter of time (hopefully the next 10 yrs) til we add "end-of-living power of attorney" to the list of documents that govern how we get old. This legal document would lay out instructions to implement assisted suicide upon reaching a (difficult I know) threshold of mental/physical impairment. With the exponentially increasing health care burden that aging baby boomers are inflicting on gov't purse strings it shouldn't receive much resistance.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
This gets insanely complicated legally and ethically, because there has to be independent proof of loss of mental competence (which happens when...?) - but paradoxically, assisted suicide legislation to date assumes a person is competent to make the decision for themselves. Clearly both can't be true. So at best you end up in a brief window where someone can be assumed to be competent enough to understand their situation while also understanding that the competence may disappear in the near future - possibly by the time they've travelled to a clinic - and someone else will be making a life-ending decision on their behalf. There also has to be no suspicion that anyone will benefit from accelerating the suicide option - which is not always as straightforward as it sounds, and would ideally have to be investigated explicitly on a case by case basis. My mother had middle-stage Alzheimer's at 90, although - perhaps mercifully - cancer killed her before Alz could. We had issues with power of attorney, because she was very clear she wanted to go home and live on her own, and it was absolutely obvious that she wasn't able to do so without endangering herself. Aside from the emotional heartbreak of having to tell someone over and over every time you meet that they can't have something they really want - because she couldn't remember a conversation from minute to minute, never mind day to day or week to week - there were also a formal legal process involving two oversight bodies (local services, and the national Court of Protection) to make sure that keeping her in a home against her will was actually in her interests. It would have been far harder if she'd left a living will saying "Please make arrangements for assisted suicide when it gets to this stage" and then apparently changed her mind as the disease progressed to the point where there was no possibility at all of mental competence.
jopsen 8y ago
Moreover many of us have seen people slowly disappear to Alzheimer.