At any rate. I don't think we, as people, really have the capacity to administer assisted suicides. I think this will be something that ends up abused.

I had to stop reading that part way through and finish after reflecting. I cannot imagine what your family is going through.

Sounds like a familiar situation.

Out of curiosity, does it mean that you CANNOT agree with both merciful euthanasia AND the sanctity of life (in my case it would not be religion-based).

That is to say, are they necessarily mutually exclusive?

I believe in the sactity of human life, but there's a gray area in the beginning and end, where I feel a mother and one's self should have control. If mother wants to kill her unborn baby, have at it. If I'm in my death bed and want to end my life, I should be able to.

I hope before I succumb to dementia (very likely cause of the family history), I have a spark of awareness and can chose to off myself doing something cool, like blind folded African lion wrestling.

Sactity of Life means that life (a live body) must be kept alive at all costs, regardless of the quality of life being led or the wishes of the person whose life it is.

So yeah, I'd say they're mutually exclusive.

Sactity of Life means that life (a live body) must be kept alive at all costs, regardless of the quality of life being led or the wishes of the person whose life it is.

So yeah, I'd say they're mutually exclusive.

If that's the definition we're working off then I don't believe in the sanctity of life.

Sactity of Life means that life (a live body) must be kept alive at all costs, regardless of the quality of life being led or the wishes of the person whose life it is.

So yeah, I'd say they're mutually exclusive.

I wonder if the member who just had his wife pass from Parkinson's will share his thoughts.

I kinda feel like the soul is something bound to a body. Once that body starts to go the soul can be trapped there. That is why you see so much frustration and sadness when they cannot communicate with their loved ones or when they can't maintain a basic standard of living.

please don't troll here.


I wonder if the member who just had his wife pass from Huntingtons will share his thoughts.

I kinda feel like the soul is something bound to a body. Once that body starts to go the soul can be trapped there. That is why you see so much frustration and sadness when they cannot communicate with their loved ones or when they can't maintain a basic standard of living.

No way to have the nursing home give her some morphine for the "pain"?

Good point. I dont know.

I'm just looking for somebody to explain to me how 1) human life, in each and every circumstance, is of the "ultimate importance and inviolability"

2) how it would not be more merciful and God-like to have some sort of process or procedure by which we can minimize or eliminate suffering in situations such as these.

The assisted suicide thing should be a different thread. I ventured a little too far afield with my comments.

I guess I dont. I do... but not where it conflicts with personal free will. If a person wants to die, they should be allowed to.

Easy words on a forum, in reality, I dont want to see every person with a case of depression lining up at the local slaughter house. I would want some sort of medical approval, which introduces 3rd party bias and is all but impossible to get right. Then there is the issue of brain function loss, can you pre-elect to commit suicide in certain events? Given how rapidly our state of conciousness changes, can "I" make a decision for the "future me"? I might say not. and then once the illness has progressed, can I ever be cleared by any reasonable medical standard to make that decision?

abortion fucks the whole thing up as well, since even though I consider a fetus life, I play the trump card of a womans right to control her body, the fetus's failure to support itself without her assistance is its own problem.

I don't understand why it's so complicated. It's my body, it's my right to choose how and when I will die if I see fit. All this "blurry line" crap is overstating the obvious to me. I don't want to suffer, and I certainly don't want my family standing at my side watching me suffer - how does that help anyone, or improve either of the parties' quality of life? The big issue is that people can make up hundreds of scenarios where this doesn't fit, but I'm not interested in those. If I have terminal cancer and my chance of survival is nil, or if my brain is too fargone with dementia to ever recover any semblance of normalcy, put me to sleep or put a bullet in my head IF I ASK FOR IT. If I'm lucid, give me my choice. If I'm not and never will be again, let me sign up now to do as I ask if that time ever comes (and given the rate of alzheimers on my father's side, it will). I'm not talking about early-onset, or sundowners or anything. If I'm full-on batshit, off-the-reservation talking to dead people and thinking the couch is trying to kill me, please just get it over with as I will never be a contributing member of society again, I'll just leach off the system until such time as I pass naturally.

Todd

I voted yes, but that doesn't mean you can't pull the plug, etc. I would extend my views to all living creatures and not just humans. That doesn't mean you can't eat meat.

this doesnt make any sense...

maybe he only eats wounded roadkill

Sorry to hear about your situation. I'll make sure to mention your mother in my prayers. My grandfather died of Alzheimer's in a similar situation. In his case and most every anecdote I hear about that the progression really takes off in the nursing homes so more than a little dubious about their ultimate worthiness or not but certainly caring for them becomes more than the untrained and unequipped can deal with. Grandmother is now (about 8 years later) getting to a similar point, so the concerns are all fresh. 58 seems way too young, though. That's horrible.

The worst part about Alzheimer's is the vacant look and lack of recognition, though it's just behind the look where they semi-recognize you but then get frustrated. And yeah, my grandfather's strength was scary crazy. 80 year old man who was seemingly frail but tossing bodies and took 3 burly orderlies to pacify him. While some had concerns about abuse, I didn't really think he was being abused even after seeing the bruises on him after I saw that display. As with many other sensitive issues, independent oversight and transparency are what is required.

Unfortunately, there's no easy answers that don't make one ultimate a heartless bastard to the other side.

I definitely believe in the sanctity of human life, though it's more than just the hearbeat. The problem is precisely similar to the abortion issue. Religious or not, conservative or liberal, most humans generally agree that the murder of other human beings is bad. With abortion the problem is the uncertainty over where exactly it turns from the "ball of cells" into a "human being."

When lucid, I don't dispute your right to take your own life, though many would question your sanity and emotion state if you tried. If one thought clearly and analytically about it, I can think of a few ways one could kill themselves that are relatively painless. Carbon monoxide is the easiest. When not lucid, well we get into a big ball of wax on who gets to decide when others have transitioned from being a human being to a thing, which is the abortion problem in reverse. Do you still classify your mother as a human being?

The trick throughout history has been dehumanizing undesirables so that they're not people and thus killing them isn't bad. Jews, embryos, vegetables, etc. As long it's an "it" instead of a "him" or "her" it's easier to justify doing whatever procedure for research or processing.

In your specific case, clearly your mother needs better palliative care. Frustration is an unfortunate side effect of the condition but a certain amount of pain and frustration are unavoidable, though both can and should be mitigated (and I'd argue can be mitigated more than your description indicates), though possibly at some financial burden to you and the rest of the extended family.

I do still think that in principle she has as much a right to live and breathe as you do, though, and am not prepared to concede that decision to you, much less any faceless politician to draw up his liquidation list.

Sounds like the latter is a completely false premise and pie in the sky to even consider elimination. This isn't fantasy land regardless of it being a laudable goal or not. Mitigation... well there's the rub. Modern society seems replete with those who want to avoid all discomfort and responsibility or better yet give that over to the State, though don't always consider the requisite liberty that goes with it.

What I find most distasteful about the leftist attitude towards euthanasia is the desire to make it so antiseptic and seemingly harmless when it's just not so. If one doesn't have the intestinal fortitude necessary to do it 'manually, ' then yeah, doing it with injection should be a non-starter. If you were stranded alone in the woods and your loved one took a deep belly wound, how many are prepared to put them out of their misery themselves?

Schaivo is a good example. It would have been more humane to shoot her or give her a lethal injection than starve her to death, but I'd argue she didn't need either when her parents were willing to continue to care for her as they wished to do.

That's at the very heart of the issue, though, and 100% germane to the ultimate discussion. If it's ok to do it to your mom or Shaivo, why not those with Down Syndrome and genetic defects? Why let them even marry and breed?

You shared a lot here and it made an impact on me and I think a lot of us.

Adam, my wife lost her grandmother on Sunday. I am terribly sorry for your loss, but I hope there is some solace that she is now at peace and no longer suffering. She is with you always.

Todd

I watched both of my grandmothers die in hospitals.

One more heart wrenching thing that I forgot. On Sunday they moved us out of the ICU into a room that Marc and I called the "waiting room." It was on the 14th floor and was exclusively for patients that were waiting to pass. No drugs outside of morphine and no monitors at all. The nurses would just take vitals every eight hours.

As they were transferring her from her bed to her moveable bed to take her to the waiting room, one solitary tear rolled down her cheek. That was tough.

There is no God. If there is, he's not the Santa Claus every one thinks he is. He gives not a fuck about our suffering.

I watched both of my grandmothers die in hospitals. One of them I was unlucky enough to be the last one she spoke to. Her last words? "I'm scared". I watched the other one scream for her father who had been dead before I was born. She sounded like a little girl.

There is no God. If there is, he's not the Santa Claus every one thinks he is. He gives not a fuck about our suffering.

He gives not a fuck about our suffering.

I asked how long she would have if they took her off the breathing machine and he estimated a half hour. That's when it became very real to me. If I agreed to it, my mother would be dead in 30 minutes. I thought about it for a minute or two while he was on the phone before agreeing to it, knowing that it was the right thing to do. Still, saying it and actually doing it are two very different things.

Man oh man...that made me get misty-eyed thinking about when that day might come with my parents.

I sit here....not really sure what to type. There's a ton of thoughts flying through my head, and I've had a lot of thoughts recently about how I might feel and act when my parents start to go down hill.

I remember before my grandfather passed, he started getting dementia and would call my father (his son), my cousins name. Sometimes he didn't even recognize his own son. I didn't really pay much attention to it, until it hit me in the stomach one day....that's going to be me.

I felt like I needed to sit down. It's hard for me to deal with that.

Honestly, I still cling to the fantasy. I don't care how immature it sounds...my parents are both still superheroes in my eyes.

I think when we grow up, Mom & Dad are untouchable (at least in my experience) in our eyes. They make all the right decisions, they create a feeling of comfort, of SAFETY. It shook my reality a little bit when I realized that they are indeed not perfect, that they make mistakes, and don't have all the answers.

A lot of that is related to my childhood, which was awesome....so my perception is going to be biased, but I think everyone at a young age, regards their parents as superheroes.

I just choose to cling to that fantasy now. I know in my heart it's probably not completely right, but it makes me feel better to believe it.

I remember asking my father one time how in the world he could deal with his father starting to slide...."You just do." is what he told me.

I know I'm going to absolutely go off the deep end when my mother is gone. So I guess what I'm trying to say is MAN, I'm really sorry you're going through this, and I'll keep everyone involved in my thoughts and prayers.

I know the above is all jumbled up, and doesn't make any sense...but I thought it might help.

You try to prepare yourself as much as you can, but nothing can really prepare you. We had to make the decision for my mother to stop the machines. They told us it could be minutes. It was 5 days. I think I took comfort in her being so out of it before whe was put on the vent so I felt as though she did not know what was going on. I hoped. We had to make the decision for my sister. When they took her off the vent it was like she wasn't even sick, but we knew her lungs were going to fill back up with fluid and we would lose her. It was less than 24 hours. She was awake, coherent and trying to comfort us for much of it until she fell asleep for the last time. It still haunts me. Especially because she didnt want to die on my birthday, but she did. She was my best friend. My everything. My father died tragically in a fire. It took a while to process that one. Nothing can prepare you for the death of a loved one, but knowing they are not suffering any longer helps you deal with it after it happens. I hurt so much for Adam. I consider him a dear friend and he was there for me when I lost my loved ones. I wish there was something I could do.... but I know I can't.