Damn. I can barely read TFA. I mean, we'll all eventually face some sort of dementia. And death, of course. But when you're 70, it's much more immediate.<p>There were times in my life when I didn't do much except drift, play with drugs, seek sex, put my life at risk, etc, etc. All the serious stuff could wait. And WTF, there'd be global nuclear war any day now. So why bother?<p>Now I'm retired. There's no need to work, so all I do is putter. And my likely future is so short that there's no point in long-term planning. Also, and it's quite amusing, I don't need drugs to space out. I need them to stay focused. And to keep various physiological stuff from killing me.<p>So maybe I'm a lot like that patient in TFA. But there's a key difference: I've never been diagnosed and institutionalized. And dog willing, I'll die before I am.
Is it surprising that people are happier and better able to deal with their illness when they believe they are doing meaningful work and are useful to the people that surround them?
Dementia patients will forget that many of their loved ones are dead, and will ask to visit them, or why they don't come to visit. Reminding them that they're dead is a terrible thing, as I found out the hard way. Just say they're out of town for the time being. They've lost their ability to cope with reality, it's best to just go with the flow instead of upsetting them.
This is another good (and very long) article from The New Yorker on the topic, from last October: <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/08/the-comforting-fictions-of-dementia-care" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/08/the-comforting...</a>
Do not be too quick to believe diagnosis of dementia. Doctors will diagnose it while patients are on medication like opiods. Then incompetence can be declared and the looting begun.<p>There is evil afoot you would not believe.<p>Dont argue. I am merely informing you, not convincing you.
Read all the way to the end thinking that it was remarkably well written, like an Oliver Sacks essay. And then I read the byline... Sacks was a treasure. What a gifted man.
It worries me to think that people would lie to me about my condition and I might not actually understand what's going on. I would like to die before this stage, but if somehow I reached this stage first they'd keep me alive and I'd no longer be able to kill myself.
Sometimes he calls out, “I want to die. . . . Let me die.”<p>I personally will try to end it.<p>The stigma and no real options makes it more difficult than it needs to be.<p>Having control over your life should not stop when it is about your dead.