I Hope My Father Dies Soon

Related: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/07/17/who-by-very-slow-decay/

> this is the way many of my patients die. Old, limbless, bedridden, ulcerated, in a puddle of waste, gasping for breath, loopy on morphine, hopelessly demented, in a sterile hospital room with someone from a volunteer program who just met them sitting by their bed.

My father was murdered about 10 years ago and really the only solace in the situation is that he was pretty sick at the time and would have suffered through the rest of his life and he was only 47 at the time. My mom has repeatedly told me she has no desire to get to an elderly age, like her mother is now. All I know is perspective on this stuff evolves over the years.

On another note, the only good thing about people being sick is that you can prepare for their death and thus when they die it can be more of a celebration. The funeral won't be as hard emotionally, and because they were sick, you are comforted by them not suffering any more.

Life is a slippery slope. We need to deal with death like grownups.

To address your fears, we should have simple, straightforward protocols for how this would work.

Wow. This touches home with me on many levels. I lost my parents a few years ago. Both suffered. I lost several other close family members who also suffered. And just last week somebody I was close to told me they were dying of cancer.

And I'm a libertarian that strongly believes that government should keep its nose out of my life.

So, of course, I'm going to play devil's advocate, at least a bit. Because if you can't defend the other side's points well, you shouldn't be in the argument.

Here's the thing: physician-assisted suicide is one thing if the doc gives you the pills and you take them on your own. It's something else if the state requires doctors to assist you, or the state requires insurance companies to require doctors to assist you. Then we're getting into the state telling doctors what types moral views they should hold.

Hey, I'm all for you shooting your cat if it's sick. What I'm against is the community all making some collective decision about who's got to go and when, and who has to do the work. That's fucked up. This thing has to be a personal choice among everybody involved: docs, nurses, family, the patient. I could imagine in many cases the patient wants to whack themselves and the family hates the idea. Fine. Then let the guy do it. On his own. Or perhaps the docs have given up hope, but for religious reasons they will never pull the plug. Fine, then let the patient do it. There's a decision to be made, somebody should make it, and the rest of society should butt out -- either from disapproving or forcing everybody else from doing things they don't want to do. It's just as bad to make somebody kill somebody else as it is to make somebody keep somebody else alive in this endless suffering nonsense.

The problem here is a search for some universal rules for a very personal thing. I don't see that playing out too well.

In many cases, we have elderly losing their minds while family members hope against hope that they recover. What to do then?

With the lack of a living will, I think the family members get to decide. That's why we have living wills. I don't like that result, but there it is. (I'd also add that this means the family members should be able to dose up grandma with enough morphine to put her out of her misery -- and I imagine such a thing happens a hell of a lot more than we will ever know. Institutionalizing people and placing all of this in bureaucratic hands is the crux of this problem.)

Also Scott, sorry to hear about your dad.

> I'm stunned when thinking people advocate.

So you come out swinging with a combined ad hominem and argument from incredulity. Brilliant!