How are you going to die?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Looking far down the road how do you figure you’ll bite it? I don’t expect any true psychic predictions but what do you think is the most likely reason?

This comes from something my mother said. She is now in the very early stages of finding out if she has lung cancer. When she found out it was a possibility she said, “I always figured it would be my heart”. She quit smoking over 30 years ago.

I always figured it would probably be a heart attack. Not a big family history of anything else. And we aren’t scheduled to go to Afghanistan till after the supposed withdrawal.

2

Please no “Like my grandfather in his sleep, not like the others in the car…”

3

Pretty much all my life (certainly for the past 30 years), I’ve had the feeling that I would be hit by a bus and killed. Every time I have a close call with a bus, which happens at least weekly in San Francisco, I think – hey, that could have been the one.

Of course I mentioned in the lifespan thread that I intend to live to 87, so basically I think that I will be hit by a bus sometime after 2050.

4

My default answer is by a run-a-way Cable Car (I live in San Francisco too).

It order of likelihood:
[ol]
[li]Suicide.[/li][li]Crazed neighbor (He is yelling right now).[/li][li]Random street violence (I live in an unsafe neighborhood).[/li][li]Diabetes.[/li][li]Earthquake.[/li][/ol]

5

I always worry it’ll be something terrible like murder. That’s unlikely though. People in my family (on both sides) live a ridiculously long time and die of old age, so it’ll probably be that.

6

Cancer. Mom is a Breast Cancer survivor (11 years!) Her Dad died of Colon Cancer.
Her Mom died of old age.

My Dad’s father died of leukemia. His Mom died of a brain tumor which metasticised from melanoma. His brother died of cancer too…I’m blanking on which particular variety right now.

-D/a

7

Based on my family history, I’m pretty safe to say heart attack or cancer. I’ll take the heart attack, please. Quick and relatively painless.

8

I’d say in order of likelihood:

Heart attack; Car accident; Alzheimer’s complications; Cancer

9

I voted for heart attack, although I’d say heart attack or stroke (or others heart/blood vessels issues).

With very few exceptions (a second cousin in a car accident, one of my mother’s cousins and one of my father’s uncles from cancer), everybody in my extended family died from a cardio-vascular issue during the last forty years or so, so there you go.

Second distinct possiblity, given that I’m a heavy smoker, would be cancer, I guess. However, the only blood relatives who died from cancer are the two relatively remote relatives of my parents already mentionned. So, I assume it’s way less likely.

10

Most likely stroke. It runs in the family, and I developed hypertension early, before age 30 although I’ve kept it controlled with medication. I just hope it’s a big one and does the job quickly rather than leaving me hanging on unable to move or speak. I’ve always thought if I became terminally ill or badly disabled I’d try to find a way to end things on my own time and save nature the trouble.
SS

11

If my family history is any indication it’ll either be a stroke or old age.

12

But nobody actually dies of being old- there’s always something, like a heart attack, stroke, whatever.

13

I always say “at the hands of a jealous husband” when I answer these things, but the percentages seem to say it will be the big C. Both parents have already succumbed and my younger brother is currently dealing with it.

Not really a prospect I care to dwell on.

14

This. Yay you. :smiley: (but you left out the bits about “peacefully” and “screaming and terrified” which make it so much better…remember that next time you tell it. ;))

Hell, I don’t know. I have such a complex puzzle of genetic/family predispositions and lifestyle factors…not to mention random chance. :confused:

Let’s see, my grandmother lived to be 100 in near perfect health despite smoking like a chimney and drinking moderately for at LEAST 70 years. Ate a lot of crap (I used to lecture her on her diet :o)

Bore 5 kids (at home), worked most of her life as an accountant and later, Sunday School teacher for 25 yrs, never went to the Dr., was very active until age 90 or beyond (I used to come visiting and be told…“Oh, MS. Frank, she left with her Cocker (spaniel) in that direction about an hour ago.” Very like the joke about “my grandmother started walking a mile a day when she was 70…we don’t know where the hell she is now” :slight_smile:

Died of old age and only got slightly loopy in the last couple of years. Sounds good to me. :smiley: (I miss you, Granny :)).

OTOH, she was married to an alcoholic who died before her (well, MOST did, but at age 60 or so, long AFTER she divorced him) and she lost 2 of her 3 sons to the disease. I myself have struggled with it (breaking the family pattern in that I am a female)

My mother, at 70, is diabetic, infirm, on 13 different prescriptions and overall a pathetic comparison to her mother at the same age or even decades later. :frowning:

Me? I’ve been a vegetarian/vegan for 15 yrs or so. Generally careful of my diet since I got old enough to choose. Spent 5 yrs or so cycling 60 miles a week. Smoked off and on since I was 15 or so. Drank enough to cover a few lifetimes in my time. Currently weaning myself off the tobacco (down to a pack a week or so), not drinking, eating mostly very well, and cycling again, as well as walking, swimming, skating, all sorts of the exercise that I know makes me feel and look better. :smiley:

Geez, as it stands. as I said, I have as many points against me as I have going for me. Heart attack seems as likely as the cancer I know I am, on the one hand, MORE prone to due to drinking and smoking but, OTOH, LESS prone to due to having breastfed 2 kids for years and eaten no red meat since 1994…

WTF. We ALL die, of something or not. No-one gets out of here alive, right?

My late DH died of lung disease (techinically, of cardiac arrest as he was going into surgery for the lung problems) due to both his occupational exposures (silkscreener/metal etcher) and his genetic condition, diagnosed late in life, which made him more vulnerable to such damage.

I could get run over by a bus tomorrow, develop some form of cancer or other life-threatening disease next month, drop dead in the shower next week from a stroke or heart attack or live to 100 in perfect health. :confused:

Do I really want to know? Is it even possible TO know? I think not.

I prefer to live in blissful denial/ignorance (it’s cheaper;))

15

I said cancer, but the only one in my immediate family who’s had cancer were my two grandparents, one colon, the other lung. My mother died of an aneurysm at 51. I would think that it would be cancer or heart attack, though I don’t think anyone in the family has had one of those.

16

My grandmother died, officially, of “cardiac arrest”. Meaning her 100 yr old heart gave out in her sleep. Then, GUNSHOT victims are often classified as having officially died of “cardiac arrest” or “exsanguination”.

Yes, some actually die of “old age”. Meaning there is no organic disease capable of causing death present, aside from the paper thin walls of an old heart that finally blew out.

17

On my Dad’s side, my dad and my uncle are the oldest ever males by far. Prior to them… 46 years old. Cancer, car accidents, heart attacks.

My uncle has already had some kind of cancer(something down near his hoo-hoo), my old man keeps kicking, he’ll be 60 this year.

I don’t want to die of a heart attack, it seems painful and at best there is a 33% chance of croaking from it in your sleep, and I’m sure it will wake you up and it will still suck.

I think I’m going to die of ass cancer. I’ve had that feeling for the past 15years. Giant bleeding malignant ass cancer, that’s how I’m going.

18

Since I’ve taken care of myself, my physical health will quite possibly outlast my lucidity, thanks to medical science. I plan to “opt out” as soon as I am convinced my mental faculties are failing.

I can’t imagine wanting to stay alive under such conditions. (I’m 51 and in good health - don’t hold your breath).

Being single and childless, and not religious, I have no moral conflicts with euthenizing myself.

And the logistics are no problem at all: pro-gun conservatives who oppose quick, reliable suicide are shooting themselves in the … eh, bad metaphor…

I would prefer morphine in my house, but I can deal with what is available. * I will respect the motel owner.*

Failing this worst-case scenario, I expect to be shot at the age of 96 by a jealous husband. :smiley:

19

Bear attack.

20

My grandmother expressed to me, in her final few years, that she wanted to die. The physical and mental limitations pissed her right off…“I can’t SEE to read like I used to, I can’t HEAR like I used to, I can’t get around and do things like I used to…I feel as if I’ve already gone on and the rest of me is just waiting around to follow.” (her actual words)

I like to think there was some reason she stuck around
(like, to see her great-grandaugher, named after her own mother, which she did.) But the fact is, she’d seen all her siblings, all her friends and a few of her children did ahead of her (she told me once, "It makes no difference if your child is 1 or 40, the pain is still the same :() and she was ready to go.

I don’t think she’d ever have taken matters into her own hands under the circumstances, but she certainly didn’t have any view of her life as sacred…it was more like this thing she was more than ready to be rid of.

ETA, she did hold a belief in a life beyond physical death, which I’ve no doubt influenced her perspective. (I do too, ftr)