How Doctors die. It’s not like the rest of us (2016)

> who has never been in the very unfortunate position of needing to die.

Defining that line is very, very, tricky. People only reach this point at a desperate time, when they are potentailly very vulnerable. There's a huge difference between two people in an end-of-life situation, one who is willing to die and one who isn't, yet both may "need" to die, and we have the meansright now to provide an easier transition from "terminally ill" to the former, but yet people end up in the second bucket all the time.

> Because so few people ever get stuck in that situation.

Yet we have many many people who have suicidal thoughts, and who commit suicide (arguably needlessly), when we have methods of helping. We should have the same methods of helping people who are terminally ill.

(That's not to get into the mess of what do the family of the patient want; things get messy _really_ fast when money is on the line as I've unfortunately witnessed, and it tears families apart.)

Yes, chemotherapy has very adverse side-effects. But it's also the best course of action we currently have for a lot of cancer patients. It varies depending on the type, grade and stage of the illness, as well as the patient's overall health [1]. It should not be rejected outright.

Now for my personal anecdata: My sister in law was in her 30s when they detected her breast cancer, and got chemo for some time. It was a very difficult time for her, but it worked - the cancer receded. She kept having to do get periodical checks to keep tabs on it.

Unfortunately her cancer came back, and this time it was more aggressive - it resisted all treatments and eventually metastasised. They took her off chemo, but her health deteriorated very quickly anyway. She died 1 and a half years ago, at home.

On average, chemotherapy gave her and my brother around 7 years of life, in exchange of some very shitty quality of life moths due to side effects. They definitively made the right choice in taking chemo the first time, and not taking it the second time. A lot of people's cancers never come back.

I am not saying that chemotherapy is worth it in all cases. I am painfully aware that it isn't. But it is worth in a lot of cases. Don't reject it outright.

PS: I should mention that we live on a country with a civilized health care system where her treatments were paid for by the state's Social Security. No one in this story had to deal with "can we afford this treatment" problems. If you are in that situation, I am sorry for you.

[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326031

And I understand now why some people say it's terrifying. Between decades of suffering or eternity of nothing, what would you choose?

Don't half ass the answer, go on a bridge with a heavy backpack zip tied to yourself, put a loaded gun to your head or have a fistful of TCA pills in your hand, whatever, then answer it.

I don't want to live, but I ain't keen on dying either, to paraphrase Robbie Williams.

I really wouldn't mind being killed by something out of my control, though.

I wonder how often physicians die as a result of taking a drug such as Nembutal - the drug recommended by Exit International. Civilians can't buy this drug - not even illegally, e.g. on the Dark Web, as far as I can see. But physicians can.

I don't want to get caught. I don't want the kind of "palliative care" that amounts to death-by-dehydration. If I get throat cancer and can't swallow, no amount of pain-killers will make my death pleasant.

I want a stash of Nembutal, so that I can do myself in, if the prospect I'm facing is a nest of wires and tubes or untreatable pain. It's an ethical disgrace that it's illegal for me to manage the end of my own life.

Apparently any relative that accompanies me on the plane to Switzerland risks prosecution for assisting a suicide. So if I want to die quickly and peacefully, I'll have to do that on my own.

The amount of humbug that swirls around this subject makes my head swim.