Fuck no. A 50% chance that I lose my family and my family loses me? That I don’t get to see my daughters grow up? That they have to spend most of their life without a father? Hell no. I can live without legs.
I use my legs an awful lot, and they’re the part of me that’s closest to being fit and strong.
But that said, the only way this surgery makes sense, from an expected-value standpoint, is if I value my legs more than the rest of me combined. Which, to me, sounds like an absurd notion.
And I did consider this point, and for a lot of hypothetical experimental treatments, that’d actually be my first reason for saying yes, ahead even of the possible benefits to me personally. But as described, this surgery shouldn’t even be past the animal trials yet.
Yes. Tell me I have a 90% chance of cashing in and I’m still saying yes.
I don’t have Ambi’s disabilities, but I have my own. He’s right. It’s amazing what you adjust to. I’ve got too much to live for to sign up for that kind of risk. There’s a lot more to life than legs (per this hypothetical).
Does my dick still work? Cause if it doesn’t I’ll roll the dice.
I lived 30 years with a man with spinal damage, which affected his ability to walk (he could, but not well), created incontinence issues, experienced pressure ulcers, and other complications… but after the age of 20 he refused further surgery.
Even while dying of cancer he’d still ask his doctor every couple days if there was something that would let him live longer.
It’s clearly an area where different people have different viewpoints, but after dealing with at least some of the related issues every day for three decades I’ve come around to the notion that much of this can be accommodated, coped with, and worked around.
I would not want to be incontinent, but I could learn to live with it.
I would not want paraplegia and a wheelchair, but I could learn to live with them.
Things would have to be really, really effed up for me to prefer death over life.
I have young children and the risks are too high. I’m sure that they were prefer a father in a wheelchair to a gravestone.
Not a chance in hell. I’d do it if I had locked-in syndrome, though that has the problem of me expressing the wish. If I can only blink and move my eyeball, I’d at least consider it, but lean towards no. Paraplegia? I barely use my legs as it is. If the odds of dying were even 5%, I doubt I’d go for it.
Para, not tetra? I’d be able to do most of the stuff I do anyway, so count me out.
I wouldn’t take my life. But I wouldn’t mind the chance to die peacefully since I don’t think this is it.
It would depend on whether I was incontinent or not. I think I could deal with being wheel-chair bound if I could still live independently. If I need someone to wipe my ass, I’ll take my chances with death.
Yes.
I think my answer would be no. It seems to me that I could have a rather full life while being a paraplegic.
Definitely. My stepdad was in a wheelchair (and eventually bedridden). Either option in your scenario is preferable to that.
I’ll do the surgery. To me, all surgery is 50/50. I’ll either wake up or I won’t.
No way.
Invisibilia (NPR show/podcast) did a fantastic episode that explores this exact premise, called “How to Become Batman”.
It actually relates to the overall thread quite strongly. The theme is about how people’s expectations (of others, of themselves) honestly impacts the outcome, including blindness. It’s seriously one of the most interesting things I’ve ever listened to and really made me think.
Being incontinent and needing someone to wipe your ass are two different things. My mother suffers from incontinence and wipes her own ass just fine.
You’re leaving out the worst option, ‘‘waking up on the operating table, totally paralyzed but able to feel every incision.’’ Which happens to people way more often than you’d like to know.
I hate surgery.
My father had his cataracts done and the first one went fine. On the second one, the guy giving the sedation missed his vein and it filled his hand, so he was awake for the whole thing. I kind of blame him because he realized there was something wrong but he is too passive to say something and disrupt things! I was there but I didn’t see what was going on or I would have said something. I’m glad it was the second eye and he could be done and not have to take his chances with the next one.