Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are worse things than death...

+1. I don't understand why some kids want everything medically possible done for their parents when mom/dad is incontinent, demented, bed-bound, and basically a vegetable.

When you need to pull the plug on someone you love, you'll understand.

I say if other people not dying bothers you, try dying yourself. This may give you the needed perspective.

Done it for both of my parents actually and agree with the need to let go at some point - neither of them wanted to be around. My mom had asked me to help get her pills to end it the year before she physically deteriorated and ultimately died - she was deaf and sat in a wheelchair all day in a diaper. My dad was out of his mind with dementia, and my mom and siblings and I all agreed to let him die from untreated cancer using only care to keep comfortable instead of going on indefinitely.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are worse things than death...

+1. I don't understand why some kids want everything medically possible done for their parents when mom/dad is incontinent, demented, bed-bound, and basically a vegetable.

I work in healthcare and see children bringing in their 95+ year old parents for monthly treatments that they don't understand and are physically exhausting. I tell my kids when I get to be that age, keep me pain free and pooping. That's all I ask.

I agree. We went through this with my FIL who'd had a massive stroke. His quality of life was really poor yet, because of medications, he was stable. My DH couldn't bring himself to stop the medications because to do so would mean that he would likely have a heart attack, stroke or go into a diabetic coma. My DH felt that to stop the medication meant that DH would be killing him - even though he knew his father would not want to live that way. I saw it as letting his life take its natural course and his father maintaining his dignity. My FIL died 2.5 years after the stroke and had exhausted all of his savings. DH and I were exhausted mentally and emotionally and his care had taken a huge toll on our marriage. My kids have some memories of him before the stroke but far more of him as demented invalid who wore diapers and smelled despite our best efforts.

I've had a number of discussions with my kids to make sure I don't go out the same way. I know my siblings will fully support them when the time comes. I just hope it's not my DH making the decision again.

I hope weed Will be legal by the time I get old. I want to go out in that purple haze eating a brownie and drinking some beer. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are worse things than death...

+1. I don't understand why some kids want everything medically possible done for their parents when mom/dad is incontinent, demented, bed-bound, and basically a vegetable.

I work in healthcare and see children bringing in their 95+ year old parents for monthly treatments that they don't understand and are physically exhausting. I tell my kids when I get to be that age, keep me pain free and pooping. That's all I ask.

You sound like a real peach, Op.

Op was being a cruel and bitchy ass. Yes, sometimes old people smell. So do babies. Should we all just wish that they die, too? Some compassion please. If smell was a reason to wish people to die we could include babies, the homeless, teenage boys, athletes, etc. What the hell is wrong with people on this board?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to flip the question on you OP.

Have you ever tried to pull the plug on an old person? Do you know the standard? Because it's not simply that the old person is incontinent and a pain in the ass, or has dementia. That sort of person is still, in fact, a living human being.

Or would you like to shoot that person in the head? Should I shoot my parents with Alzheimers, or smother my child with cerebral palsy? What is it you are asking here? What is your standard for who is living and who is dying?

The person has to have no brain activity. Zero.

Yeah! This means we can get rid of OP!

I'm not the OP, but I'll never forget visiting my sick, suffering great grandma in the nursing home when I was a teen, and listening to her sob about being unwanted and hating her life, and wanting to die. I am never, ever going to allow myself to live that long, and I wish it had been possible to help her end her life with dignity. She used to be a very proud woman, and it was clearly devastating for her to lose her independence and end her years bedbound. I will never forget the time my aunt brought my toddler cousins into the room once and urged them to kiss Grandma, and the little girls started screaming in fear: Grandma KNEW they were afraid of her and the way she looked then, and I wanted to die just seeing her hurt and bewilderment and shame. Do you REALLY think it is merciful to prolong someone's existence when they are in that state, begging to die?

Well I wish that was true. My dad died this year. I wish he was still here no matter how smelly he was. Why don't you try talking to the old
Smelly people? I bet they have some awesome stories.

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to flip the question on you OP.

Have you ever tried to pull the plug on an old person? Do you know the standard? Because it's not simply that the old person is incontinent and a pain in the ass, or has dementia. That sort of person is still, in fact, a living human being.

Or would you like to shoot that person in the head? Should I shoot my parents with Alzheimers, or smother my child with cerebral palsy? What is it you are asking here? What is your standard for who is living and who is dying?

The person has to have no brain activity. Zero.

Yeah! This means we can get rid of OP!

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to flip the question on you OP.

Have you ever tried to pull the plug on an old person? Do you know the standard? Because it's not simply that the old person is incontinent and a pain in the ass, or has dementia. That sort of person is still, in fact, a living human being.

Or would you like to shoot that person in the head? Should I shoot my parents with Alzheimers, or smother my child with cerebral palsy? What is it you are asking here? What is your standard for who is living and who is dying?

The person has to have no brain activity. Zero.

You do realize there are right to die with dignity laws. In Oregon you can legally end your life, you do NOT have to be brain dead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_die

I would like to have the right to die as soon as I don't recognize family members. I should have that right.

If you want to live as a vegetable and only die after you brain dies no matter how excruciatingly painful it is living off morphine for months you should have the righttyo choice that too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are worse things than death...

+1. I don't understand why some kids want everything medically possible done for their parents when mom/dad is incontinent, demented, bed-bound, and basically a vegetable.

When you need to pull the plug on someone you love, you'll understand.

I say if other people not dying bothers you, try dying yourself. This may give you the needed perspective.

Read the article above. It isn't the dying people that are desperate to live. Nor is it those that have been close to them in the final years. It is those that fly in from hundreds of miles away a couple of times a year and seek to show how much they care. Were you one of those?

Not pp, put that is a really offensive question. You have no idea of the hell and grief other people have been through.

It's not an offensive question if you have been a caretaker of a terminally ill loved one. You would realize their pain and empathize with the person suffering. There is nothing wrong in death with dignity.

No, if it's the sick person making this choice.

If you were in a position to make this choice for a loved one, you'd appreciate the complexity of the issue. Before that happens, you can try empathy.

I'm going to flip the question on you OP.

Have you ever tried to pull the plug on an old person? Do you know the standard? Because it's not simply that the old person is incontinent and a pain in the ass, or has dementia. That sort of person is still, in fact, a living human being.

Or would you like to shoot that person in the head? Should I shoot my parents with Alzheimers, or smother my child with cerebral palsy? What is it you are asking here? What is your standard for who is living and who is dying?

The person has to have no brain activity. Zero.

I'm not sure that my colleagues who have lost loved ones in the past 2 weeks would agree with OP's observation. Must be nice to be able to spend a holiday bitching instead of mourning.

Anonymous wrote:I think this post may get the award for the most insensitive of the night.

+1 Seriously. Will add that my husband and I made sure we had living wills that were carefully written. Our parents did the same.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are worse things than death...

+1. I don't understand why some kids want everything medically possible done for their parents when mom/dad is incontinent, demented, bed-bound, and basically a vegetable.

When you need to pull the plug on someone you love, you'll understand.

I say if other people not dying bothers you, try dying yourself. This may give you the needed perspective.

Read the article above. It isn't the dying people that are desperate to live. Nor is it those that have been close to them in the final years. It is those that fly in from hundreds of miles away a couple of times a year and seek to show how much they care. Were you one of those?

Not pp, put that is a really offensive question. You have no idea of the hell and grief other people have been through.

It's not an offensive question if you have been a caretaker of a terminally ill loved one. You would realize their pain and empathize with the person suffering. There is nothing wrong in death with dignity.

I held my mother as she died in my arms just a few months ago. I realized her pain. I agonized over the decisions I had to make. There is nothing wrong in death with dignity. There is everything wrong with asking a stranger if s/he is "one of those" that makes life and death decisions based on how it makes her look.