Reply to Withholding Alzheimer’s Diagnosis from the Patient

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My Dad had Alzheimer's.  So did his dad before him.  I'm well aware of what this disease brings and I know that chances are it's coming for me.

I don't think it is wrong to keep the diagnosis from your MIL.  It would clearly cause stress since it's what she has feared for a while.

It's a sad and slow decline (or it was for my family) but [b]medically assisted suicide[/b], especially in the early stages seems over the top.[/quote]

It's attitudes like yours that keep patients in unimaginable suffering. Just because you saw the disease from the outside doesn't mean you felt what it was like inside. You cannot take someone's right to die away from them. But maybe you don't accept that a sentient adult has the right to make that decision? Is Christianity and the sin of suicide blinding you to that fact?

Studies conducted on self-administered pain medication show that end-stage patients who are given the ability to regulate their own dosage of morphine don't take more of it, and don't abuse it... but they report feeling more at peace and less in pain. It's because they are given control over their pain. I am convinced that passing laws to make assisted suicide easier, and making it widely available, even for early dementia diagnoses, won't increase the suicide rate by much. It will make patients more at peace with their decision not to kill themselves.

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Interesting. I think we do have a form of medical assisted suicide in the US. My dad was on life support for a day and when we took him off they said they would give him more and more morphine if he stayed at the hospital. Unless we wanted to take him home. Only 2 available options. So there was no getting out of the hospital for him, and the doctor said he went on life support when they gave him an anti-psychotic. It was 72 hours after being admitted and he was dead. I was shocked. [/quote]

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