It's getting harder to die
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It's getting harder to die
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Re: It's getting harder to die
#2The topic of a “living will” came up in a family discussion after my mother’s funeral.
None of us have a pathological desire to live at all costs, but as it turns out, figuring out when to say “yeah I’m done, see yah” and halt treatment is way more complex than it first seems, especially when making the decision for someone else. Things can happen very fast, and there’s a bunch of things that basically require a job in the industry to know ahead of time.
If anyone knows of some comprehensive resources for helping define reasonable limits, I’d love to hear it.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#3Kind of a tough read, I just turned 37 and this was the year when it really hit home that your body degrades and sometimes it never goes back to "normal". I was used to sports injuries being a pattern of injury -> recovery -> ramp back up to 100%, but have suffered some injuries recently and am coming to terms with realizing I will never return to 100%. They will be lingering things I deal with for the rest of my life.
It is terrifying transitioning from seeing health as innate to viewing it as something you need to carefully nurture or it will slip away.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#4...and it's getting harder on the families too with nothing to really address it. It used to be one day you'd drop dead, or get really sick and be dead not long after, and your family after a terrible shock could begin readjusting to the new reality without their loved one. Now you can have what used to be a death sentence and continue living for years or even decades. But the systems which support the patient's life are not supporting their families, who have to live with the stress and financial burden of keeping their loved one alive, and the prolonged grieving process which can now take up a huge chunk of their lives and still doesn't really prepare them for death anyway.
I'm not saying that we need to get rid of medical advances that prolong life, it's just that these things have created new problems that we aren't dealing with and that not many people are really talking about.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#5The topic of a “living will” came up in a family discussion after my mother’s funeral. None of us have a pathological desire to live at all costs, but as it turns out, figuring out when to say “yeah I’m done, see yah” and halt treatment is way more complex than it first seems, especially when making the decision for someone else. Things can happen very fast, and there’s a bunch of things that basically require a job…
There is the POLST form for governing interventions. There is durable medical and general powers of attorney. There are irrevocable trusts to protect trust assets from long term care.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#6The topic of a “living will” came up in a family discussion after my mother’s funeral. None of us have a pathological desire to live at all costs, but as it turns out, figuring out when to say “yeah I’m done, see yah” and halt treatment is way more complex than it first seems, especially when making the decision for someone else. Things can happen very fast, and there’s a bunch of things that basically require a job…
Talk to an estate attorney and they can give you some advice, but ultimately you'll never be able to account for every possibility, and you're going to have to trust somebody to make the right decisions for you at some point.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#7Kind of a tough read, I just turned 37 and this was the year when it really hit home that your body degrades and sometimes it never goes back to "normal". I was used to sports injuries being a pattern of injury -> recovery -> ramp back up to 100%, but have suffered some injuries recently and am coming to terms with realizing I will never return to 100%. They will be lingering things I deal with for the rest of my lif…
Not everyone gets even that - I've had mobility issues since I was seven years old. It's been strange to realize that it probably shaped my personality somewhat; I always felt older than my peers in some way. The silver lining might be that while now they are starting to say how old they feel (I'm basically the same age as you), I'll often tell them that I don't feel any older.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#8Kind of a tough read, I just turned 37 and this was the year when it really hit home that your body degrades and sometimes it never goes back to "normal". I was used to sports injuries being a pattern of injury -> recovery -> ramp back up to 100%, but have suffered some injuries recently and am coming to terms with realizing I will never return to 100%. They will be lingering things I deal with for the rest of my lif…
Hey you're me 15 years ago. I stopped the sports and switched to sustained low damage exercise like cycling, hiking, swimming etc. While you can't undo the damage done if you have a very high level of fitness, you can reduce the effects of the further progression of time. Better be as fit as a 50 year old with some damage when you're 70 than as fit as a 70 year old with some damage.
End game is not pretty. My ex wife didn't do any fitness stuff at all and she's walking with a stick while I'm doing 30km hikes at 3000m...
Re: It's getting harder to die
#9a Christian fundamentalist doing a 180 on Terri Schiavo because she rediscovered Luddism is certainly an interesting take
Re: It's getting harder to die
#10Kind of a tough read, I just turned 37 and this was the year when it really hit home that your body degrades and sometimes it never goes back to "normal". I was used to sports injuries being a pattern of injury -> recovery -> ramp back up to 100%, but have suffered some injuries recently and am coming to terms with realizing I will never return to 100%. They will be lingering things I deal with for the rest of my lif…
your situation is probably not completely relevant to age, many injuries are not recoverable no matter how old you are. You accumulated risks of such injuries which produced result.
If you switch to safer kinds of sport/workout, you still can have a chance to be very active for many years until old age.