I play in a musical group, that plays at an eldercare facility. Today they had us play on the memory care floor. That was the first time I have ever been around that many people who had such advanced dementia. Made me wonder how many people would wish to remain alive in that condition.
Happy for the discussion to go however folk wish, but the question is simple. Is there a point at which you would rather die, than continue to exist with advanced dementia. I must acknowledge, most of these people did not appear unhappy - to the extent they appeared aware of anything.
I guess the definition of “advanced dementia” may be ambiguous." I am describing something other than forgetfulness. These people were essentially like very young children, seemingly extremely dependent on several extremely patient caregivers.
I’ve cared for a lot of demented patients. In the early stages, when they have moments of lucidity, they pretty much uniformly express a wish to die rather than continue to live with dementia.
And seeing what they go through, I agree with them.
Taking my family history into account, on my father’s side there is a large amount of aggressive cancer and many deaths before the age of 60. I am currently 55.
On my mother’s side, there is mental illness, substance abuse and a fair amount of suicide, but barring any of that, they live a looooong time, as in at least 95-102. But their wiring is totally fried.
I don’t want to live to 98 if my mind is gone. If I make it past 60 cancer free, I think that’s the barrell I’ll be staring down. And like panache45, I’ll find a way to off myself before it gets too bad.
You know that a cryogenic freeze has some non zero probability of success. Sure the odds are dismal today as our science and understanding of the mind is so poor - but it is not zero. If the physical structure survives, it is probably possible to eventually tear down their frozen brain and recover their stored memory and personality, and experiments conducted by MIT have attempted to do this recently with small sections of rat cortex. (and it sort of works, well enough to show the process is feasible although of course the emulated brain slice doesn’t exactly match the original because of flawed current models)
Therefore freezing patients when they first develop dementia is the rational treatment to try. Convince me otherwise.
I think the reason this is not commonly done now is because of the influence of irrational religion. If you reject religion and model expected outcomes purely by the known physical world, this is the correct action to attempt.
I have seen it also. It is not pretty. Both my ILs were severely affected by dementia/Alzheimers. It was so sad to watch 2 very vital people go down that road. I want to die before that happens to me.
I would rather be dead than costing my family money and emotional turmoil keeping my body alive if my mind is gone. My whole family is aware of my strong feelings about this.
I’d rather be alive. What the hell, I’m not paying for it. I have pretty good insurance. For all we know, dementia might be a blast! I’ll hold on and hope that medical science finds a cure. I certainly don’t worry about being a burden to society. Society has been a burden to me all my life. Time for some payback!
My mother has dementia. At this point, she can’t remember things for more than a few minutes.
Her biggest complaint is that she’s extremely bored. Of course, if you can’t remember things, you can’t read anything or follow a movie. She watches TV, which I don’t think she enjoys that much, and does jigsaw puzzles. Sometimes she seems happy, in a childlike way. Other times she’s confused, fearful, and distressed.
A couple of years ago I was staying at the house on her 86th birthday. I went to get her out of bed and she told me she wanted to die. I told her it was her birthday so she wasn’t allowed to die that day. She asked me how old she was and I said, “You’re 137!” She laughed and got out of bed.
If I reached that point, I’d prefer to die. I mean, what’s the point? Life is about experience, and if you can’t remember you’re experiences you’re as good as dead anyway, even if you’re still walking around.
Based on everything we know, it’s absolutely horrible.
Why is it “rational” to try to preserve every decrepit malfunctioning human forever? Do you anticipate a shortage? It seems like a more rational plan would be to make new ones whenever we need them. We already have the technology to do that.
Fundamentally, I’d like to think I’d want to die mentally “whole.”
OTOH, I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife, and given that this is all you get, and when you’re dead you’re gone, in that light, I’ll selfishly hold onto existence for every possible second I’ve got coming to me, whether that means that I will be “present” or not.
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I’d rather my family deal with my death than with mental deterioration. For myself, it really wouldn’t matter, would it? At some point, I’d cease to be me.
On one hand it’s easy to say you don’t want to live if you can’t function mentally very well. But your perspective might change once you’re actually there. There’s still plenty of enjoyment to be gotten out of life with poor mental function, especially if your body is aging normally and you’re still physically healthy. If I can’t remember my own relatives but I really love smelling flowers, eating cake, and playing old video games, which I’m sure will be standard in nursing homes in about 20 years, if I still enjoy the 10,000 heavy metal songs on my Ipod, then I figure that’s not a bad way to spend my last few years.
See, I’ve never understood euthanasia. No one needs help killing themselves who is competent to make that decision. And wherever euthanasia is legal it always expands into killing people who did not give consent.