At what point would YOU want to pull the plug on YOURSELF?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by this thread.

I will notify the mods to ensure this does not violate board restrictions against discussing suicide. To avoid that, I’ll ask that people discuss their opinions when they reach an older age - let’s say older than 60, and they experience significant mental and/or physical decline. So I am NOT asking for people’s views on ostensibly healthy younger people just wishing to commit suicide.

I have often expressed my desire to not exist after I get to a point that I no longer consider myself to be myself. And I mean that both mentally and/or physically. If I cannot maintain myself in a tiny studio apartment, where I can read (and remember) books, bathe and dress myself, and engage in meaningful conversations with others, I do not think I would wish to exist. Possibly with the assistance of a nurse/caregiver who visited for a couple of hours daily.

I CERTAINLY would not wish to be kept alive as the zombies I have encountered in assisted living memory care units. The most challenging situation would be if I were mentally intact, but needed great physical assistance. But mentally, at the very least if I cannot recognize my wife/children/grandchildren, and cannot be mentally responsible for my own safety within a small apartment, I do not wish to continue.

I know other people who wish ANY efforts be made to keep them alive ANY length of time, so long as they have a single eyelash fluttering.

If the mods allow, I’d be happy to discuss any aspects of this, tho we ought to avoid discussing specific methods.

A couple of significant issues I perceive are:
-who ought to pay for/provide what level of care?
-what factors have to be considered in accommodating preferences no matter the individual’s wealth?

I don’t desire to persuade anyone that their choice is right or wrong. I just hoped this could be a meaningful discussion.

2

My grandmother lived for years with mashed potatoes for brains. She was in a fantastic care facility but it was still horrifying. This woman who was obsessed with being proper and concerned with “what will people think” starting cussing like a sailor and making sexual innuendoes. She would have been beyond mortified.

If I get on the brink of that state, I hope to have the courage to take myself out to not be a wasteful burden on society and to not put those who care about me though that.

3

That sort of thing is what really got me started thinking about this. Both my parents were completely sentient before they died in their sleep 1 month apart. They had moved into a low-level care assisted living facility 2 months prior. At that point, I thought they went too soon. But as I hear people discuss their parents/grandparents in their 80s/90s, I think going quickly in mid to late 70s wasn’t all that bad.

My MIL, OTOH, developed dementia, and basically took 10 years to die. Even though she had sufficient $ to end up in a fine facility, I realized I never wanted to be like that, and never wanted my kids to have to see and deal with me when I was like that.

4

Moderator Note

A few ground rules for this thread:

  1. No “how-to” type information.
  2. No posts that encourage or idealize suicide.
  3. No threats of suicide.

If you have having suicidal thoughts, as much as we would like to help, this is far beyond what help a message board can provide. Please seek professional help.

Discussions of things like current laws, debate over what those laws should be, religious and ethical considerations, and the pros and cons of various “death with dignity” type considerations are permitted.

5

Speaking only for myself, I completely agree. I don’t want to be here when my quality of life dips below a certain point. That point is for me alone to decide.

I said recently in another thread that one of my big fears is not having the means to end my life when I choose. It would give me great peace of mind if I had access to life ending drugs. I don’t want to resort to a firearm or some other method that is messy and causes others distress. I might happily live until I was 100, but knowing that I could get sick or something and NOT have that access is a constant source of worry to me.

A friend is currently going through a health crisis that is robbing them of a lot of life’s enjoyment. They are talking about not staying around much longer if good news isn’t forthcoming. I’ve told them I would miss them very much, but would understand. I could easily see myself doing the same.

I’ve been around people with ALS and simliar afflictions. There’s no way I will allow myself to succumb to something like that. While I understand there are legitimate ethical concerns around this, I am convinced the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. So our society that is able to put down dogs when they are in discomfort can go f*** itself in the neck for not allowing humans to do the same when they so choose. I’m exiting on my own terms, hopefully not for a long while, but it’s my decision.

6

For that reason, we clearly expressed our desires with each other and our kids. 2 of our 3 kids were very willing to help us. (The 3d said we shouldn’t ask her to murder us.) This would definitely be an issue for persons without close friends/family. One of many reasons I support medical assistance in dying, such as in Canada.

I’ve spoken with some folk who ask, “What if when you got to a certain point, you change your mind?” I don’t see that as a problem. At the level I am thinking about, I would have long been declared mentally incompetent to handle my finances or legal matters. I don’t see any reason a mentally incompetent person ought to be thought competent to counteract clear requests made while competent.

7

Not much to add attitudinally. I’m in agreement with @Dinsdale & @Llama_Llogophile.

Existing isn’t living. It’s very traumatizing for your loved ones. It’s very expensive for somebody. I hope not to experience mere existence, whether that’s by luck of not having to or by skill of actively avoiding it or terminating my life myself before that becomes impossible.

But …
I don’t have kids, although my new wife does. Given the current state of US laws, even if I had bio-kids, and they were like-minded about their own case, I’d be extremely reluctant to give them any request like

Finish me off if I can’t remember you’re my child or if my memory is still OK and I ask you to kill me three times on three different occasions.

You place them in the terrible spot of betting their life, their freedom, and their family on helping you. Yes, you did a lot for them raising them. But IMO this is a bridge too far. Under current laws.

And maybe even under current morals. …

When my first wife died a couple years ago after a long cancer battle she was mentally fine up to about 3 days before the end, and other than very lazy and weak was physically functional as well. She could talk, think, walk, feed herself, take a bath, etc. Kinda listlessly & slowly, but she could do all that.

Then she rapidly fell apart first physically, then mentally, then was sorta comatose for 24-36 hours then her carcass took its final breath.

As much as I was there for her and with her throughout the ordeal, killing her would have been very difficult psychologically for me. Despite my military experience in that department. It’s not the same, not at all.

And as many times since that fateful day that I have rehashed our final hours together and considered my own shortcomings then and there, I cannot imagine how much worse it would feel now to know I had actively killed her, whether neatly or messily. Even if it had been her wish, doing so would still amount to a sort of betrayal. In addition, perhaps, to being an act of love and mercy.

Speaking from sort-of experience, I would not wish that emotional aftermath on anyone, least of all my own hypothetical children.

If I, or you, are to do this, IMO we need to arrange to do it ourselves. It need not be a surprise to others, at least not conceptually. But in the moment of truth, this must be a DIY-only maneuver. IMO.

8

For legal reason I imagine it will pretty much have to be DIY in most cases. FWIW I thought The Last of Us Episode 3 handled this issue very well.

9

Probably the worst experience of my life was being my sister’s medical power of attorney when she was dying. She named me that minutes before they put her on life support. She was in a medically induced coma for a couple of weeks and at a certain point it was clear that she wasn’t going to recover or would “recover” in a vegetative state. I signed the DNR and to take her off of life support a couple of days later. It was n incredible honor to be given that level of trust, a horrible burden but not a difficult decision.

10

Yeah, we often think about who we’d trust with our life, but perhaps a more important question is who we’d trust with our death.

11

My response is, “since I’d be dead, what ifs are the least of my interest.”

My mother died in the hospital while getting prepped for transfer to a nursing home, which I think represented how much of a horror that would be for her.

My mother-in-law turned down a nursing home for a live-in helper as she sank in hopeless dementia. When even that became nonviable she was prepped for a hospice and died before the ambulance arrived. She was ready, somehow. So were everybody who cared for her.

I would very much like the option to forego those scenarios. How did we get to a situation in which my rights over my own body are put in the hands of nameless others? Religion, of course. I’m supposed to accept that God has rights that supersede mie; crazies have pounded this belief into the public sphere for so long that people stopped questioning them.

I’m heartened to see so many others agreeing that this long-standing acceptance of years of torture is to be challenged and brought to an immediate end.

As for those who say that any system of assisted suicide will be abused, I ask, what do we have now? All systems will be abused. All, without exception. Any replacement system for “you must die horribly over years” is going to reduce abuse by orders of magnitude. Why are you against that," I ask? “Provide an answer without resorting to god or religion.” There are none.

12

The actual decisions are hard.

I was my mother’s health care proxy. My mother was losing it, but still competent to make major decisions, and was ready to check out. And she had a health crisis that would have let her do so. She was bleeding (painlessly) into her stomach, at a rate that would have killed her in a day or 3.

I talked with her doctor about whether it was appropriate to not treat it, but he lobbied strenuously for her to at least be diagnosed. (Fwiw, he is salaried by a major hospital, and had no financial interest in her choice. He just believes in preserving life.) He pointed out that the odds were excellent that this could be treated.

So i took her to the hospital, and told my sibs what was going on. My brother called my mom, and berated her for “suicidal” decisions. Her doctor reminded her how upset she’d been when my father decided not to seek treatment, and died (nearly painlessly, of a pulmonary embolism.) He pointed out that even if she was ready to die, her children weren’t ready for her to die. I told her that if she wanted to decline treatment, i would miss her, but i totally supported that decision. But i admitted that my brothers might never forgive me for that support. I also pointed out that their reaction wouldn’t be her problem.

And i think she was also a little afraid of the finality of death. So she decided to consent to treatment.

They did an endoscopy, put some clips on her stomach to stop the bleeding, and gave her two pints of blood. Medically, it was a complete success.

When she woke up from sedation, she was in pain and believed they were still operating in her. They called me to the recovery room to try to calm her. She was furious, and said, “you should have let me die”. The gastroenterologist who treated her was devastated, and said she didn’t want anyone doing that to her when she was in that condition.

The next day she felt better than she’d felt in months (all that healthy extra blood) and seemed pleased she’s done it. But later on she told me that if anything similar came up i should not let her be treated.

A few months later she died horribly of covid, terrified and in pain, and totally demented.

I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. I think i could have encouraged her to refuse the treatment. And she would have died peacefully with her children at her side, while she still had some marbles. Her actual death was far worse. But my brothers balked about my putting her in hospice care even when she was obviously going to die, and when covid had robbed her of the ability to speak or move. They would have resented me bitterly, and perhaps resented her if i had convinced her to refuse treatment.

We were lucky that my mother had enough money to pay for her care without being a burden on anyone else. But even so, it was hard decisions with bad outcomes either way.

13

I have so many, many problems with this. I know exactly what I would want in certain situations - there is no version of me that wants to exist on machines with no brain activity. The problem is all the other possibilities. Right now, I am dealing with some feelings about how much I have changed since I was young - and the thing is although I miss the person I was, and wish that many of those changes had never happened , I’m still happy with the me that currently exists. Even though long-ago me would never have wanted to be current me. And I’m not sure that something similar won’t happen - right now, I think I wouldn’t want to live a life where I couldn’t recognize my family. But maybe that will depend on what “recognize my family” . I probably would be frightened all the time if people I didn’t know where coming to my home and telling me to do things and putting me in their car to take me places. But things might be different if not recognizing my family means that I think my granddaughter is my daughter and I’m basically living 30 years in the past. I don’t think I can know now what I would want then and as much as I hate not being able to spell it all out, I will have to leave those decisions to my daughter if it comes to that ( not my son, I know my children) . It is my hope to die like most of my family has, without a long period of physical or mental disability first.

14

Quad
My life would be greatly curtailed in a wheelchair but if I couldn’t go anywhere on my own that’s not a life I’d want to live. I’m too independent & too on-the-go to be stuck in one room.

15

Therein lies the problem. We can point to someone today and say “I don’t want to be that”, but by the time you are at that point you no longer have the agency to make the call to end things, nor the power to do so.

16

There’s an interesting term for this - it’s called a Ulysses Pact (aka, a Ulysses Contract).

Every medical power of attorney or DNR is essentially a Ulysses Pact. It’s a person deciding what their future self would want. There are hazards because things can change and nobody can foresee every eventuality. But IMO making no decision or planning is worse because of the misplaced incentives within U.S. healthcare and its liability issues.

17

This is exactly the problem with this sort of question. Many people with severe disabilities felt this way… until they became disabled, and then (as @doreen says), they changed, and felt differently about it.

It’s difficult to know how you’ll feel. It’s impossible to know how a diminished you (if cognitive loss is involved) will feel.

18

It’s something I’m being forced to consider, what with my cancer and all. My family knows to put a DNR on me - and I pity anyone trying to argue against it with my sister.

We put one on my mother - she had lost voluntary muscle movement but her mind was still sharp and after two years of it was ready to go, so we let her.

19

It’s in my living will. Helicopter ride out to sea.

20

Another possible place to discuss such issues (not meant in any way to discourage discussing them here): look up “Death Café”. It’s not the only sort of issue discussed at such gatherings (basically they’re about trying to make the process of dying a subject of legitimate discussion, not something everybody looks away from); but it’s one of the issues that can be discussed there.

My mother, and all of her siblings, died in various degrees of dementia; mostly in their 80’s. I’m 71. It’s been on my mind.