I work at a long-term care facility as a nurse aide. The experience has changed my views on certain topics including the extremely controversial idea of euthanasia.
I see the very elderly, bed-ridden, in non-stop pain, with open sores, no bladder or bowel control, being spoon fed pureed food, just waiting for death and I have to wonder if it would just be an act of mercy to put them out of their misery.
Some people with advanced dementia compulsively rip their clothes off, masturbate in public, cram their hands down their briefs and eat the contents.
I see the 90 year old women and think about them 50 years ago, all prim and proper and how utterly mortified they would be to know that now they’re ripping their clothes off in the middle of the dinning room full of people while staff tries to get them to swallow a mouthful of thickened juice.
Personally I’d rather swallow a bullet than end my life like that.
We do have Maid (Medical assistance in dying) here in Canada but you have to be of a sound mind to request it. Last year we had a resident successfully use the service and had a last day with their family and then the doctor came in the the person went to peaceful sleep on their own terms.
The people who are too far gone mentally don’t have that option and I think they need it the most.
What happens if a person agrees to euthanasia while they’re healthy with a diagnosis of dementia, but they don’t go through with it? I assume they wouldn’t want it after losing control either. I really don’t know the answer.
If you put your wish to die should you get advanced dementia into a living will, would that be a good idea? Where’s the line for “advanced enough to act?”
I’m more pro euthanasia than most, but the idea of an advanced directive for euthanasia in the event of severe dementia raises serious philosophical issues. There are two people involved, there is Young Competent Buck (YCB) and Old Deranged Buck (ODB). Now YCB might view the prospect of turning into ODB as literally a fate worse than death, but ODB may have come to terms with it in his own way. Many people imagine situations as unendurable until they are forced to endure them. Perhaps in whatever hole of the mind ODB finds himself the occasional public displays of self abuse provide him enough satisfaction that he finds it preferable to death. Why should YCB’s opinion on the worthiness of ODBs life take precident. They may derive from the same body but they are by definition two very different people now.
If ODB is capable of expressing his desire to die repeatedly and consistently then I would be in favor, similarly if he was unwakably catatonic. But is he has volition and has expressed no wish or inconsistent wishes to die, then he should be allowed to continue.
For myself, having seen the way my Dad went, I’d like to have a “deadman’s handle” arrangement. My euthanasia (PAS) request is registered early when I still have all my faculties, and then I take a specified cognitive test periodically. If I fail the test (say) three times in a row, then my request is carried out.
I wouldn’t want anything to be irrevocable. If I still have the cognitive capacity to express a wish to cancel my euthanasia request completely, that should be respected.
Euthanasia and suicide are immoral under all circumstances.
Of course, when the person involved lacks the mental capacity to consent, it’s no longer euthanasia, it’s just manslaughter.
Allowing this kind of stuff just further greases the slippery slope towards a future where the proles are culled as soon as they’re no longer of use to the Musks and Bezoses of the world.
I can kind of get your view on euthenasia, though I have a living will that directs the doctors to not resuscitate me if I become irretrievably damaged. I am also a registered organ donor so they will keep me alive until they can harvest what they can.
But, as the M*A*S*H theme song says, suicide is painless. Sure, there is pain for others, but when dead, how would I be able to care?
That you so casually gloss over the pain that suicide causes to those who know and love the victim is precisely part of why it’s never the right choice.
But this thread isn’t really about suicide, so I won’t say any more on that topic.
OP - I can’t imagine how you do your job. They can’t possibly pay you enough.
Myband plays at a retirement home. One day, due to double booking, they had us play on the locked memory care floor. What a horror show! I cannot believe that any of those people, or anyone who loved them, would want them to be warehoused in that state.
I hope I have the presence of mind to check out once I’ve begun down that slippery slope. My wife and I have agreed to kill each other should we get to the point, and 2 of our 3 children have agreed to do so for the survivor.
Hell, you would put a dog down if it got to that point. Not to do so would be tantamount to torture. Tho some misguided folk do essentially torture their pets, extending their lives out of misguided feelings of “love.”
Yes, I often think we are kinder to animals than we are to humans. We are so afraid of society that we act (or do not act) to the detriment of the individual.
I find this statement legalistic and rigid in the extreme, and it shows absolutely no empathy towards the intense suffering that many people have to endure. My “Pro Choice” stance extends to life in general, not just to the reproductive process. It is my life. It is my choice if I want to end it, not anyone else’s.
This. For decades now I’ve stayed prepared for the day. I’d be so much happier now if my Advanced Directives allowed for euthanasia should I reach a point where I lacked the ability to do it myself
My mom dealt with cancer at the end. She went through several surgeries and courses of chemotherapy that were horrible to endure.
When she lost another short remission, she told me she didn’t have it in her to endure more chemo, if it was ok with me. I explained that in her shoes I’d have thrown in the towel years ago with the initial diagnosis.
Then she talked to my brother, who gave her the @Smapti hard line suicide is wrong, you may still win this battle lecture.
She suffered through another few months of absolute misery. I’ve never spoken to my brother about this.
Ya know - if you need a hand, I can be there in less than a day!
My ability to think rationally is probably the greatest part I perceive of what it means to be me. And if I am no longer me, I do not wish to exist. I can respect - tho I do not fully understand - that other people feel differently. It would be nice if they - and society - would grant me the same respect.
That’s just religious indoctrination masquerading as “morality”.
You’re on the 99th floor of the WTC and the flames are starting to ignite your clothes. You have a choice of burning to death slowly and extremely painfully, or jumping out the window to a quick painless death. You’re telling me it is immoral to jump?
You’re the protagonist from Johnny Got His Gun. You have no face, you are blind and deaf, can’t speak, can’t communicate in any way. You can’t see living one more painful, frightening minute. You’re telling me euthanasia is wrong? You’d condemn this poor man to decades of this continual torture, because your “morality” says we must endure what god gives us?
I find @Smapti’s POV (not picking on him as such, just the POV he so clearly articulated) to be utterly immoral, repellent, mean-spirited, and short-sighted.
We can worry about the Musks of the world when their roving goon squads are rounding up proles for slaughter.
Until then we are torturing thousands (millions?) of humans every day is a way that is chargeably animal abuse if done to your pet instead of your elderly mother. That, to me, is barbaric. Monumentally barbaric.
I could perhaps accept euthanasia solutions if it was in a society which took extraordinary care for it’s sick, old and incapacitated population. In that case, I would believe they were doing it out of great concern for the person. But in our society, the level of care for the elderly is very bad. We give more loving care to our elderly pets. Elderly people are marginalized and ignored by their relatives. In our society, I feel euthanasia would be used by relatives who didn’t want to deal with the burden, cost and hassle of caring for their older relatives. And perhaps even to get access to their inheritance early. The current situation is terrible, but there are ways that their quality of life could be improved. Those ways are inconvenient and expensive which is why they don’t happen, but there are alternatives. I wouldn’t trust that euthanasia would be used with the best interests of the patient in mind.
Like others mentioned above, I wish there was a dead man’s switch I could have installed. That would be the best way. Install it while still competent and then have it give me a heart attack or something if I got too forgetful to interact with it. While I completely support suicide for these kinds of situations, suicide is still hard on the family even if they understand. It leaves a lingering sadness in the relatives. I’m sure the relatives understand why the person took their own life, but I think they are left feeling like they should have done more. But if the person dies of a “natural cause”, then it seems easier to accept.
The far, far majority of residents never have anybody visit them, ever. There are pictures on their walls of relatives but we never see them.
Now many of them are still fully enjoying their lives in the facility. They have friends, enjoy their meals, participate in activities, their pain is under control etc. But for some of them, it’s so bad and I’m constantly thinking of them in their prime and what they would think knowing what they’ve become and how much pain they’re going to be in while they lay, alone in a bed until they finally die.
I like the idea of having a plan in place suggested above like not passing a number of cognitive tests in a row and I get to check out.
