What Broke My Father’s Heart

Amazing story. Brought me to tears.<p>My step-grandfather found himself in a similar position about 5 years ago. He'd been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and was in for a long decline. He opted to refuse food, and died within a few weeks. Sadly, that's the only option available to many who are ready to move on.<p>I remember him comforting his wife and daughters, telling them not to be scared, even as he lay hallucinating and dying. He'd lived a good life to an old age, and he was ready.<p>We owe our parents better. Death is a part of life.

I'm not responding to the specific story in the article, but -<p>Several of my grandparents had dementia of one sort or another. They clearly could still enjoy life, but completely differently than when they had their faculties. I wonder, if you could have gotten the question through to them, if they would have felt their lives weren't worth living. It doesn't seem the same question to ask a 30-year-old, "would you like to keep living at age 80 with no short term memory?" and to ask an 80-year-old with no short term memory, "is your life worth living?"

Single page:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.html?ref=magazine&#38;pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20pacemaker-t.htm...</a>

This just made me donate an extra $100 to the SENS Foundation (sens.org), which is working on curing the diseases of aging (many of which aren't considered "diseases" by the regulators at the FDA, so many are dramatically under-researchers despite the massive amount of suffering that they cause).

Yeah, this made me cry. My grandfather has been bed-ridden with throat cancer for months, unable to get better or die, unable to speak, losing his mind from all the painkillers, his relationship with his wife breaking under the strain.

It may end up only being a very short period of time in human history where we are advanced enough to prolong life with these type of stopgap measures without being able to treat the causes.

Wow, what a beautifully written piece.

As somebody who has been in this spot and known many more who have been there, it was a good article. But I had a hard time sorting out the political bullshit. I eventually got overwhelmed by it and bailed out.<p><i>Doctors peddle their wares on a piecework basis; communication among them is haphazard; thinking is often short term; nobody makes money when medical interventions are declined; and nobody is in charge except the marketplace.</i><p>No. This is not true. If the marketplace were in charge, the people who got the service would control and be responsible for paying for it by making free and informed decisions. Instead, this is a case where regulation is in charge -- payments are made based on arbitrary rules set forth by well-meaning people. People who might read articles like this and think gee, if we only made up a few more rules, or had some really smart guys in charge of the right stuff, we could fix these other unintended consequences we made last time we mucked around. There is no need for some uber-doctor who could somehow take the place of the buyer. There is <i>nobody</i> who can effectively take the place of the buyer. That's one of the main structural problems of the system. It's not that the marketplace is working -- it's that we've perverted and destroyed the marketplace and instead we have a free-for-all for handouts based on policies created by whatever gets votes. Which will continue to get worse.<p>Wonderful writing, though. I am always amazed at the capacity of folks to see their entire life experience through their own filters (including me) regardless of what the actual facts are. I hope writing this helped her reach closure and say goodbye

I sincerely hope that, if my ability to think and remember die, that my family and friends will help my body follow.

We don't have the proper tools to maintain and repair our bodies like we can with our houses and cars, at least not completely. What we got is medicine too imprecise to repair many parts of the human body.

Story aside, a few days back there was an article, <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1424893" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1424893</a>, on how the NYT would ban the word "twitter" from usage by their writers. Nevertheless, the author uses the word "googled" (page 3). And that is part of the beauty of the English language - new words and new meanings. No doubt, the "ban" will be lifted within a year or two.

Great article. I have a similar outlook on life, I would rather die than lose my mind, and I discussed this with my wife already.<p>I think the point is not the pacemaker. But the elongation of life and not seeing death as a good thing. If we always chose to prolong life, under any circumstance, then people profit (a dying person needs lots of medical care) and their caretakers only suffer. The person, I don't know, is it better to live with a half-working brain? Is it even living at that point?<p>I think while people want to live, people need to face death early, and tell their loved onces what their wishes are. And hopefully this sort of situation won't happen, or not for long.