“The U.S. is more problematic because it is harder hit by a range of issues that kill people even before they hit old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity and inequities that make it hard for some people to get sufficient medical care.”
“The U.S. is more problematic because it is harder hit by a range of issues that kill people even before they hit old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity and inequities that make it hard for some people to get sufficient medical care.”
Due to his dementia, my dad went from being a professor emeritus who was still writing books to someone in a nursing home, barely able to do 20-piece jigsaw puzzles within a very short time. And if he knew what was going to happen and could have been offered euthanasia, I would hope he would have taken it as an option. It was such an undignified way to die.
And the dementia care facility was a very long drive away (90 minutes for me, an hour for my mom), so we weren’t even with him when he died.
Do you want to be fully conscious when you die, or not really aware it’s happening?
It’s a complicated question.
It’s definitely complicated. And I also think it would depend on the context of my death. If I were in a lot of pain or discomfort, I don’t think it would matter to me whether or not I was fully conscious.
About a year ago I asked the grandmother who recently passed away whether she would want euthanasia. Despite being a devout Christian who firmly believed that suicide is a sin, she said “Yes, absolutely”. She said that she didn’t consider it to be suicide at that point. She felt that she had lived her full life, given what she could to the world, and was now only detracting from the world by burdening others.
Personally, I don’t belive that she was detracting from the world, even in her state, but she was obviously miserable. Also, maybe her adult children who were taking care of her would have seen it differently since caring for her really put restrictions on their lives.