You learn that, in 3 months, you will no longer be able to walk or even stand. After that point, another 3-6 months until death.
You have a gun and bullets, and loved ones who will support your decision.
Do you wait it out or leave while you can still function and enjoy life?
Thinks this one over - there is a wall of boomers coming to a mortuary near you.
We caused hundreds of schools to be built, then colleges to expand to regional campuses. We demanded the vote and we got it. We stopped one obscene war, and eliminated the draft. Roe v Wade was a boomer production.When we first hit the medical establishment it was childbirth. The father is no longer confined to a waiting room to smoke and pace.
In short: we tend to get what we want.
Predictably, there are going to be a whole bunch of us facing the posited situation.
Personally, I’ve always been in the, “if I’m an eye-lash with a heartbeat, keep the plug in … and come visit me every weekend, you ungrateful bastard!” camp, so no, I don’t think I’d want to make my family clean up my brains.
This has real meaning for me, because Alzheimer’s runs in my father’s side of the family, and diabetes and heart problems run in my mother’s. I saw what my mother went through, taking care of my father, and I have no intention of putting my partner through that. He is 20 years younger than I am, and deserves to have a long and happy life after I’m gone, and not spend his best years caring for me.
I have requested that, whatever becomes of me, I want to be kept alive if there’s any chance of recovery. But I don’t want to be kept alive if my life has become an incurable downward spiral.
And yes, I plan to take care of it myself, while I still have my wits about me. My partner and extended family understand this, but I will not need their assistance.
I’d try to find some way to go out with glory, the altruistic opposite of committing suicide by cop. Maybe sabotaging some terrorists who are kidnapping orphans or something. I do not want to drag down or inconvenience those around me.
In this scenario, I’d stick it out to the end. If I had other choices besides a gun, such as a large dose of some medication that would swiftly and painlessly kill me, or better yet, a willing doctor with an IV, my decision might be different. But, shoot myself? Couldn’t do it.
I agree with the implied conclusion of the OP: we’re going to “get what we want” in the form of legalized physician-assisted suicide for those who are severely impaired and decrepit. We will demand, and vote for, and receive “suicide clinics” where we can get it taken care of neatly, properly, safely (!) and legally.
That is the “way out” I expect to take when the time comes.
If not allowed? Alas, I have to agree with Ms. Pumpkin: guns are right out. I’ve seen the results of gunshot suicide. (My mother, bless her, took a .357 to herself. The results were discouraging.)
The scary side of this is that I’m also rather depressed, and so I want protections against suicide being too easily available. There should be some mandatory counseling, and some careful investigation of circumstances. We can’t let heirs shove elders into a hasty decision, with inheritance more in mind than ethics.
Yeah, the gun option is just not necessary. I ask the doctor for three months worth of a certain medication. The doctor hands me the Rx with the proper daily instructions and says, OK, just don’t take this all at once wink, and I get my affairs in order and say my goodbyes and once I can’t stand any more, I take it all at once.
Washington, Montana, and Oregon are already on board with this, so the wink isn’t needed, and I’m hoping it won’t be too long before other states are soon with it, too.
From what I understand autopsies are not usually performed on terminaly ill patients. If this si the case I might take some extra pain pills and go to sleep but I would not want my kids to know I did it.
Why conceal it from adult children? I have never had children, so have no frame of reference for this one.
Unless a crime is suspected, I doubt if anyone could legally perform a post mortem without express permission of next-of-kin.
When my father (the bastard) finally died (lung cancer - hey kids! Cigarettes are cool!), some asshole in a suit at the nursing home rather eagerly asked each of the 4 kids if we wanted an autopsy. No, we’re certain the creep is dead, no need to cut him into pieces - find your profit center elsewhere.
Well, I’m clinically depressed and have been suicidal at times, so I agree with Trinopus, in that I really don’t want to make it too easy, either. I think if I was in that much physical pain, the necessary medications wouldn’t be very hard for me to acquire if I decided to go that route, when that time came. I hope to live long enough to see end-of-life care evolve to include ending-of-life procedures, whichever state I reside in.
If there’s hope, I’ll pursue it. If there’s not hope, then I’ll let the doctors use me as a testbed. If they have any prospects for experimental treatments for my condition, sign me up. The worst that can happen is they’ll learn something about what not to do. If they don’t, heck, I’m sure there’s something else productive they can study in me (if nothing else, thoroughly document what happens in my condition, to maybe help come up with something for the next guy with it).
I wait until the winter, if I can, and lie down in a T-shirt and shorts in a snowbank one night, having left a note as to where to find me the next morning. I’ve read that freezing to death is one of the least unpleasant ways to go.
Y’all still better have your Advance Health Care Directives all in order, and some loved ones (if you’re lucky enough to have any) on board so you can trust them to exercise your wishes. Otherwise you’re liable to have a sudden stroke or other such abrupt live-altering event, and you may have to live like a semi-conscious semi-vegetable for another thirty years. Or a fully conscious but fully paralyzed hopeless helpless wreck.
Did you see that recent thread about FDR and polio? Did you do the suggested google image search for iron lung? First image it shows is an iron lung ward with row upon row of people in iron lungs (I counted about 30 in the picture). Those people spent 20, 30, 40, or even 50 or more years flat on their backs inside iron lungs.
And don’t count on getting pain meds to keep you comfortable unless you have that AHCD in place, and even then, it may be a crapshoot. I’m sure at least some readers of this thread remember that thread, a few months ago, about the difficulties people have getting their pain meds, with the rampant out-of-control DEA paranoia that stalks the land.
Having a decent end-game for your life is a crap-shoot. Just a fucking total crap-shoot. If you aren’t financially secure enough to end up in a well-run nursing home, where your wishes might be respected, you could end up in a low-budget human wreckage warehouse, where you’ll be kept minimally alive and otherwise treated like baggage. If you don’t have someone who will really watch out for you and fight for your wishes, you’ll end of in the care of some over-worked under-paid social worker who has 5000 people just like you in her case-load. Good luck with that.
Try this:
That millions of Americans (who have been the driving force of the cultural/economic/political history of the last 60 years) are approaching end of life.
As we get there, many of us will be in the posited (hypothetical/proposed) situation.
Short Form: Head’s UP! This issue is coming, it is coming big, and it is coming soon.
I kind of like Chronos’s answer. If the Docs can learn something from my end-of-life +/or death, then have at it. If not, I know of many ways to “disapear”. OTOH I have seen the doctors wrong about this diagnosis often in the past, so hope springs eternal. My father-in-name-only had been told he only had three months to live in 1970 he died in 2011. My grandmother’s docs were off by 25 years. My uncle is still kicking 19 years after the “two months to live” diagnosis. One of my sisters has lived for over 40 years after we were told that she would die at two weeks of age. So I probably would not put much faith in the doctors guesses.
Another issue for me personally is organ and tissue donation. If they are going to be unusable, that is different from being able to help someone else out. There are a lot of things to consider here. I guess that I can only say, it depends.