Dementia and "Duty to Die"

[Bella]

For realz, Baroness Warnock?
You obviously lost your marbles due to old age and should be taken to the vet to be put out.

[Jennifer]

Originally Posted by Hmm

I didn't read the article but I remember discussing this with a friend once and the conversation went something like this.... Remove your emotions for a minute and imagine that there is a group of 10 people made up of 5 males and 5 females ranging in ages from birth to age 75. And the particular circumstances of this scenario call for a downsizing of the group by 2 through extermination. Who should the 2 who are exterminated be?

Hopefully the volunteers.

[YourLocalJesus]

Originally Posted by proteanmix

Aside from my gut reaction of NO! I think when Warnock says we should probably think about how this plays out. The way she says it is a harsh but it's kind of true.

I agree... The first thing I think about is that it's bad etc, but then again, how many lives are not fucked up by taking care of someone in a relative vegetable state? Not to mention the sacrifices everyone else has to make, how many other productive jobs all these caretakers could do. It's not a matter of touchy-feelyness it's a damn matter of the economics of the western world.
700.000 in little U.K. alone, wich will double to 1,4 million in a few decades. And that is just dementia.

When I've grown too old or become too ill to take care of myself, I will kill myself before I become a burden to those around me. I'll probably do it with narcotic medication overdose. Hopefully morphine.

[proteanmix]

I agree that no one should have their human dignity stolen from them and put down like chattel.

But as someone who is dealing with a similar situation (we're searching for assisted living homes for my grandmother who is in the early stages of dementia) there are some practical decisions you have to make. She was living with my parents until last year and is now living with her older sister (87). My main point is who will care and how will the elderly person be taken care of? What if the person in question has major health issues? What if they're on fixed income and can't afford assisted living or nursing homes? What if they have no family members available to be financially supportive? I guess that the person is human with human emotions is a given to me so it's not about that.

Hmmm, I did the same exercise in college to. We all voted to let the older people go. We don't live in a culture that venerates the elderly and it would run counter to the die-hard individualism we adhere to. Collectivistic cultures do a much better job and caring for family members (nuclear and extended) than our culture. You can simply look at the astounding numbers of homeless in our cities. Getting old is something we run away from kicking and screaming so I'm not really surprised that eventually we'd just want to sweep the elderly away like we do with other inconveniences (just to be clear, I'm being sarcastic). I've talked about this with my parents both of whom are in their late 60s. My parents are older than most of my peers and we've already had lengthy conversations about what they want when/if they reach the stage they can no longer care for themselves. A lot of this has to do with how much preparation and communication a family does for the inevitable aging process. It doesn't have to come out of nowhere and blindside everyone.

Fact Sheets - Assisted Living

WHAT IS THE COST FOR ASSISTED LIVING?
Although assisted living costs less than nursing home care, it is still fairly expensive. Depending on the kind of assisted living facility and type of services an older person chooses, the price costs can range from less than $10,000 a year to more than $50,000 a year. Across the U.S., monthly rates average $1,800 per month.

[Anja]

Good point, protean.

It's all a semi-useful exercise in humane decision-making until one has actually been there. Preparation is useful and probably necessary as when the moments arrive there will be some shock and confusion involved.

I'll interject a small story from experience about the emotional turmoil created in me when my father begn to die.

Dad just wore out, like "The one-horse shay." The cause of death was listed as pneumonia but it wasn't viral. His throat was just too tired to swallow anymore and he was aspirating his food into his lungs.

The doctor explained that dad was basically healthy for an eighty-six year-old and would still be able to live for a considerable period of time. He would need to be placed on life-support and fed intervaneously in order to do so.

His cognitive function was failing, but he was still in that grey area between clarity and confusion, probably failing because his brain wasn't receiving sufficient oxygen.

The family gathered and were in agreement that he should be allowed to die. But we also wanted Dad to make the final decision.

The doctor met with him and laid out the options and Dad chose not to be put on machinery.

This is where moral conflict set it for me. I sat in hospice with my dad for four days. He was to be kept comfortable but given not food or drink. Essentially the medical system expected him to starve himself to death. Much more they couldn't offer. And Dad did and I helped him as best I could.

But about the second night I began to feel angry as I lay in the dark with him listening to his struggle. My dad was an honorable and gentle man. He wouldn't have expected a creature which had outlived it's years to have to die the way he was having to.

You can imagine, being INFP, that I am one of the most tender-hearted spirits and have only killed a living thing once in my life - a mercy killing of a wounded bird. That was so painful to me that I determined that I would never again take the life of another living thing.

But there at night, hearing my father working so hard to die, I thought to place a pillow over his face! This is the first I've ever talked about it. I wouldn't expect many who haven't had the situation to understand the horror of that conflict. But I do understand it well now.

Why was a good man being forced to die in a situation one wouldn't place a beloved pet?

I asked the doctor how much longer it would go on and he said it could last past a week. This was a shock as I thought no one could live that long without food and water but apparently it's possible as the elderly need less.

I have no particular point other than that continued helpless feeling about how this problem can be solved in an ethical way. And a deeper understanding of people who "assist" in loved one's deaths.

[heart]

Originally Posted by YourLocalJesus

I agree... The first thing I think about is that it's bad etc, but then again, how many lives are not fucked up by taking care of someone in a relative vegetable state? Not to mention the sacrifices everyone else has to make, how many other productive jobs all these caretakers could do. It's not a matter of touchy-feelyness it's a damn matter of the economics of the western world.
700.000 in little U.K. alone, wich will double to 1,4 million in a few decades. And that is just dementia.

When I've grown too old or become too ill to take care of myself, I will kill myself before I become a burden to those around me. I'll probably do it with narcotic medication overdose. Hopefully morphine.

Demenita is not the same as vegatative state.




^Anja's story, though emotional and heart touching, is about a man who presumably has reached a terminal state of life, that's not the case for most with demenita and demenita in particular is what this whole article was about, the wanting to put people down like unwanted animals because they have demenita and are difficult for busy people to work into their schedules. Apples and oranges in this discussion.

I know it hurts to watch a loved one suffer, my own mother suffered with diabetic neurophy of the digestive tract in the last year of her life and it was awful to watch but she didn't wish to die and tried to fight it. And yeah it was a drain on our "resources" but she was a human being who deserved the right to fight to live if she wanted to. She'd been ill with lung disease (life long NON smoker) for about ten years and yes I am sure so many of these death advocates would be itching to get their hands on her and put her down because she wasn't "productive."

With comments like "duty to die" I foresee a future were people in weakened conditions are pressured into "doing the right thing" and just DIE already, let the people around them murder them.

[Anja]

I see, heart. I slipped some sideways there. Though I suppose some would say that my father had reached a state of social uselessness.

This idea of being "useless" is a hard one for me to buy. I trust all here to be of use to each other. And while I can't always see what the purpose of some humans is, I think there must be one. I sometimes do some volunteer work in a care center and there are people there who don't know who they are or who anyone else is. They can't dress themselves, etc. But sometimes two of them will sit together and absently hold each other's hands, beyond verbal communication; Perhaps even beyond understanding or caring. And I can't believe that they aren't serving a purpose at the moment.

Even more troubling to me is that so many of us buy the lie. That if we can't actively serve humankind that we are worthless. Disposable. One of the many pitfalls of our very materialistic social POV.

My mother is a Bible-reading Christian and she was, for a time, very troubled by the verse, "Faith, without works, is dead."

[YourLocalJesus]

Originally Posted by heart

Demenita is not the same as vegatative state.

Sorry, i'm just used to talking swedish all day long. We use our word for vegetable (grönsak) to describe a lot of bad traits, but usually it means something with heavy retardation. Gotta admit that it changes my view on the word "vegetable" in english a bit, too

[kyuuei]

When you take what the article is saying for theoretical face-value, it makes perfect sense. The amount of time and effort taken into trying to keep someone unaware of reality takes away from the time people might be spending improving the society while they themselves still function in it.

The problem is, theories are only that. In reality.. when I grow old.. out of reality or not, I would like to have known someone cared about be enough to take time out of their day to at least care for me.. and when I can no longer be an asset to them, to at least visit me at the retirement home. In return, I do the same for my family. Currently, my grandmother has Dementia, (both of them do, but I only care for one.) and I insist on taking time to visit her, read to her and listen to her complain of things that don't exist because I know behind that, she knows we're visiting her and continuing to be in her life until the very end. There's a sort of selfless love to that and I feel it's acts like that that contribute to society on an entirely different level.

[Anja]

You make me grin and feel fuzzyallover, Kyuuei. Hee.