ICUs are amazing technology. You can keep almost anyone in a temporary state of stasis. This is great for people who have a condition that just needs more time to heal (like a lot of people with Covid, or people after car accidents). But for people who have something unrecoverable, it’s a very weird place to be. You’ve been pushed off the ledge and are now frozen in midair. You will hit the ground when the magic is removed, but you also can’t stay frozen forever.
It's getting harder to die
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Re: It's getting harder to die
#72a Christian fundamentalist doing a 180 on Terri Schiavo because she rediscovered Luddism is certainly an interesting take
The fundamentalist stance on Schiavo's case (to continue care at all costs) was always interesting/puzzling to me. On some level I would assume that people with a strong belief in the afterlife would be more open to letting people pass from this mortal earth than those of us who don't have strong beliefs about an afterlife... but clearly that wasn't the case :P
Growing up in the church, it eventually became pretty clear that nobody actually believed in heaven. Almost nobody’s actions were congruent with what you would do if you actually believed in heaven.
The stances on death, the reactions when people died… it all matched what you’d do if you believed death was the end and none of it matched what you’d do if you believed people went on to eternal paradise.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#73how about suicide? i'd compare it to knowing when the party is over and then going home instead of getting yet another drink and miserably trying to score with the last remaining woman. it's an art and it can be trained at many occasions. now for the act itself - the regular hn crowd should be technically apt enough to assemble the required gear around a big gas cylinder of nitrogen. that's as peaceful as it gets.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with this perspective in my opinion is that many times, especially for an elderly person, a small emergency can very quickly escalate into a life and death situation, and the outcome is not clear until it’s too late. you may enter the hospital thinking you have a decent outcome, but you end up with a bad outcome. for example, nobody plans to go on a ventilator. But if you need one (like severe pneumonia),…
you’re going to have a painful death with or without the tubes But I feel that was the main point at the start of the thread: if death is certain and going to be painful, why must we drag it out? Why is that additional lifespan (measured in days) so much more important than comfort?
The point is that it's not certain. With the medical assistance you might recover fine and live another five happy years.
Is it really worth trading away that opportunity just to not accidentally die on a ventilator? I'm not sure.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#75Regular reminder to read Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. It offers a detailed and sometimes shocking look into the end of life/palliative care system in the country and show just how broken the incentives are industry-wide.
Strongly seconding this recommendation. Dr. Gawanda distills down how to be led by the dying person’s priorities.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#76Slightly tangential, but I believe this article segues into a discussion about assisted suicide or euthanasia at the end of life. My entire family has been suffering over the past 18 months watching my 88-year-old grandmother slowly pass away from age-related deterioration and AD. I worked with mice during my PhD training in the US. If a lab was caught with lab mice suffering like my grandmother is without euthanizin…
Because far too many people believe that human life is the most precious thing on Earth and willingly ending it is literally the worst thing you could ever do.
Or even more grotesque, that the suffering for death is a key part to a righteous afterlife.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#77I'd like dying to be as easy as flicking a switch.
Medically-assisted suicide ought to be available to anyone (not only of sound mind and not only with a terminal condition), and at any time. People ought to have the right to die, just like they have the right to water, food, and shelter. In most countries it is currently easier to take other people's lives than to take one's own.
People ought to be able to step into a hospital, ask 'hey, I'd like to die', sign a couple of forms saying 'yes, I'd really really like to die', step into an anoxic chamber, and be put into hypoxia and brain death in a matter of minutes. Obviously, an emergency stop plunger ought to be available in case the person in question changes their mind.
The belief that life is a gift from a god is a highly Christocentric, Western view that I disagree with. We are brought into the world without any real consent; we should at least be able to easily choose the date, time, and manner of our passing if we so desire.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#78It's worse than the article says, because it's from a doctor's perspective. I have CRPS, one of the contenders for worst chronic pain you can have. It's a "suicide disease", because if it advances to stage 3/4, there's a suicide rate of about 70%. It sucks a lot. I've had well over 200 spinal procedures over the last 30 years to try to mitigate the pain, with dozens of other surgical procedures in less tricky spots.…
> I was threatened with an ITO (Involuntary Treatment Order) if I didn't go ahead with having an internal defibrilator put in me. Did this threat come from a doctor? What an astounding lack of empathy. I would switch medical providers in a heartbeat if at all possible.
I personally would be so upset in that situation, that I would refuse it on principal from that provider after being threatened, health be damned.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#79Kind 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…
Part of me really wants to pick up hockey - just for fun, recreationally - but at 40, I'm worried that I'll get injured to the point where I won't be able to do other things I enjoy, like cycling.
Hell, I fell off my bike from a stop a few weeks ago, and landed on my knee, and it took a week and a half before I felt like I could trust my leg to hold weight.
Re: It's getting harder to die
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m quite convinced that I live in a country where we never let people die like this. Also, I guess prolonging treatment is in the interest of for-profit hospitals as found in other countries, thus as long as your suffering is profitable, you wil…
I would be surprised if there exists a country where people never die like this. You would have to euthanize every single person who died of a long list of natural causes.
Maybe NK will implement mandatory euthanasia at 63 or something crazy.