Cancer. Give me a little time to get things in order. Say “Good-Bye,” etc.
And by the way, Mr. Wellington, do you ever hear from Juan Hernandez, SanJuan Hernandez, Sanjay Kumar, or Tyrone Washington. I hear they’re still a little ticked.
I concur with this. I saw my mother die of lung cancer, my brother die of colon cancer, and my father die of his fourth heart attack. The first two were grusome and pitiful, with death coming as a kind mercy. There was for each of those a long period of the loud gurgling and spastic breathing. The last one was more akin to losing consciousness. He simply stopped breathing.
I’d rather come down with terminal cancer than die suddenly of a massive heart attack.
A heart attack has always been a fear of mine though (eventhough I’m in excellent shape) because they run in the family. And when they come the person goes from just living an ordinary life one hour and being on a slab the next. Sure cancer is slow and painful but I want to look death in the eye when it comes for me. I don’t want to be hit with the pain and sudden fear of a massive heart attack and be taken out before I know what’s going on.
I’m not so worried about the pain of cancer; pain can be treated, and we usually do a pretty good job of it in terminal situations. (Not always, of course.)
That said, cancer is NOT the way I want to go, partly because I don’t want my family to have to see me go through it all, but mostly because I don’t want to see death coming. The last thing I want is “time to get my affairs in order”; the plan is to keep them in order. So for me, of the two, I definitely want the massive heart attack.
We talked about this a lot in my hospice training in residency. If you take my family out of the picture, the ideal way for me would probably be Alzheimer’s, because the worse it got and the closer I got to death, the less I’d be able to comprehend it. The only problem is that I wouldn’t want my family to have to watch my decline, so all things considered, I’d prefer one of the alive alive alive alive DEAD deaths.
I would want to say goodbye to my wife–tell her I love her, run my fingers through her hair, feel her lips on mine, and have her be the last thing I see before I leave this Earth.
A heart attack would offer me none of these opportunities. As agonizing as it might be, I would pick cancer.
Not to be stupid here, but do you really know they can’t comprehend it? This is an honest question - I do not know that much about Alzheimer’s, but I’ve always wondered how we can really know how much is left going on in those minds after they’ve lost the ability to effectively communicate with us. I suppose brain activity scans or something of the like?
My dad lived pretty much independently until he was 85, then was broadsided by a truck. He died instantly and never knew what hit him.
I’ll take that one.
But if you force me to choose a heart attack or cancer, I’ll go with the heart attack.
Excuse me, waiter. I’ll have what the lady’s having, except I would like to try the 2079 vintage. 
I’d like to complete the hugest orgasm I had ever had.
I’d be coming and going.
I concur with everything in this quote for the exact same reasons (including the family history). I’ve lived in fear of dying of a heart attack for a long time. My father died that way when he got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom because he wasn’t “feeling well.”
And it’s worse for me because I’ve developed a lovely form of GERD in the last three years that gives me severe heartburn. When THAT first started, I spent many sleepless nights thinking that I was about to die. Stupid, but true.
I’ll take the cancer, thanks. And when the pain gets really, really bad, I’ll lay myself out on the pin side of a bowling alley and let my fellow bowlers take me out with dignity. 
After watching both my mother and mother in law slowly die of cancer, I couldn’t imagine a worse way to go. My grandfather on the other hand sat on the toilet on morning and just before he finished his heart gave out and he fell over dead.
My other grandfather went in his sleep unlike the passengers in his bus that were screaming and hollering…
I know it’s an old joke but someone had to use it.
LOL. No I don’t; I’ve found an even better place since.