Millions of people are suffering from dementia that lasts years. How can this be right?

And who decides about their quality of life? You? Hey, you sound like someone with a shred of compassion, probably better you than the next person. But you know darn well the caregiver that knows the person the best would not be the one to decide...so who will it be? Some doc who doesn't want the hassle of taking care of them? Medicare who wuld just as soon not pay for their care? The POA who has been abusing their power to rob them blind and collect any inheritance there might have ever been before you or someone else in the family gets a share? Not meaning to be mean here, but suppose that was legal...can you imagine the post on here enititled "My mom has no quality of life but she won't agree to euthanasia...even though all the healthcare people recommended it be done ASAP! How can I make her see that it's best for everybody?"

ive lost two elders to dementia ( and poor health ) in the last 3 years . in both cases i have reason to believe the dementia might have dulled their senses enough to actually provide relief from their physical health concerns . they were more blissfully unaware than they were troubled or scared . ( IMO )

Civilized societies do not euthanize human beings because they no longer useful. Who decides what is quality of life? How about severely developmentally delayed children? Euthanizing millions of people is not humane. Would you consider the nazis humane for their extermination of what they consider people of lesser value.

People can choose euthanasia, really. Many people kill themselves each year. Some places have legal assisted suicide. I read that California will soon be having legal "death with dignity." Many people with dementia don't want to die, however. They just want for it to be better. Sometimes someone will say, "I just want to die," but when you ask them if they want to die today, they say No. Euthanasia isn't all that easy. It's always something available for later in someone's mind, but not today.

My mother's dementia recently got worse so I joined a support group and one of the first posts was about euthanasia. I find that very depressing because I just want my mother comfortable and as happy as possible, not dead! I don't consider killing people to be compassionate. Suffering isn't nice but we all suffer in some ways.

I should correct myself. I used euthanasia and assisted suicide like they were examples of the same thing. They aren't. Euthanasia is done by someone else. Assisted suicide is done by the person themselves. I don't think euthanasia is legal in any of the more advanced countries.

So who decides in the countries where it's legal? Is there anyone who can honestly say that YOU would want to continue with life once there is no quality left? I know I certainly wouldn't. Maybe dementia patients could ask for euthanasia, while they still have mental capacity, for their life to be ended once the quality is gone?

Kaydi. I think that's the point - someone else decides - and people start getting involuntary euthanasia because someone else, rightly or wrongly decides their life must not be worth living, or worse still is not worth supporting. Respect for human life does downhill from there for all of us. The price of preserving respect for human life is that some of us struggle to provide for the comfort of loved ones or ourselves in any way possible while waiting for natural death to occur.

One person deciding for another quality of life when determining whether life is worth living is a very, very slippery slope.

Oh I have a sore bottom from sitting on the fence on this one. I truly believe that for me (again only for me) because I refuse to have people looking after me and doing for me because I can't do for myself, I have written an advanced directive... I would like assisted suicide but if I couldn't manage it I would hope someone would invent a device whereby I could manage it for myself...it's been done before.

Euthanasia is whole different ball game and although I approve of it wholeheartedly in some very specific cases - terminal and in extreme pain but not necessarily limited to that, I don't approve of it as a legal tool to rid a country of its financial pressures (however you choose to wrap that one up).

I believe in the right to die with dignity and I believe that if I am ever diagnosed with a terminal illness I should have the right to have a final party with my loved ones in my own country and that I should be allowed to die in my own country with, if that is the way my family agrees, my family around me although I would prefer to die alone, having given them all a last hug goodbye.

As for quality of life. While I can do for myself I have quality - when I can't just let me go because I don't want that for me.

I just saw this on 60 minutes...

One women had terminal cancer, she drank the drink and within 5 minutes she passed peacefully in bed wirh her husband... Her choice..

That's what I would do... No suffering, while loved ones all hang around my bed staring at me waiting for my last breath..

No stopping death whens it's standing at the door...

i just lost a friend , actually slightly younger than myself . he died from diabetes and liver cancer . he confided in me that he had insulin and knew how to use it -- indicating he'd end his own life if the suffering got too intense .
he didnt do that . he wasted away and his body's biological mechanisms ( imo ) dulled his senses and caused his death to be tolerable if not comfortable .
comfort meds are a science , again ( imo ) . we were instructed when my mother died , since she was in a state of terminal agitation , that she was not to return to consciousness no matter how much liquid morphine that required .
her body was done but she didnt have to be there to endure the end of life .
it was a morphine overdose that ended her but she liked opiates so she went out gellin like magellan ..
like a pre exonerated felon ..

oh, Jude...really - think from the other side, think about someone who loves you and how they might feel if they knew you preferred death to receiving care from them...and acted on that. There should be no shame in needing care, after all none of us are really totally independent in today's world. Unless you are running your own ISP single handed you could not even be posting on here without a little interdependence.

My children DO know vstefans and they don't like it but they accept my right to make my own decisions about my life. They also know I have overruled any interference on that from them. And no I don't run my own ISP but I can turn my PC off when I want to ;-) xx

I refuse completely to be told by professionals (who have no idea of the life I have led) what I have to endure at the end of my life. I don't WANT to be cared for my others and I believe that FOR ME I should have the RIGHT to die in a dignified way not to end up tied to machines that I cannot turn off. My life - my right.

No offence intended at all vstefans and I 100% uphold other people's views on their own lives but it just is not what I want and I truly believe that the individual should have the right to make decisions for themselves while they can.

It is such a slippery slope, I know my Mother was screaming in agony, that the pain from Cancer which had metastasized from her uterine Cancer (she had had a radical hysterectomy, and extensive radiation treatment), to her left pelvic bones to the point of multiple fractures, some healed, but other bones continuing to disintigrate, possibly from over radiation, she was in massive pain, and was begging to die until her Morphine was at an extremely high level to somewhat manage her pain, and at the end, with her body actively dying, she Was snowed unconscious. But for many days during that interim time, that she was begging to die, no dementia, still lucid that had there been such a form, she would have signed it, that perfect little device or if she had access to her pain pills, she herself would have done it, or gobbled them, however my sister kept her from them, a personal and religious decision, that sometimes she even regrets having taken that decision from her. For right now, we don't have a perfect legal option, but I do see one becoming available in the future, as Jude and so many people have stated to me, it is our life, and we should be able to plan IN ADVANCE, for the Right to decide when and if we can take our own life if we choose. That perfect device would definitely help! To me, it always comes down to the ones that we've left behind, the burden of guilt they might feel if we choose such a plan. A very slippery slope indeed.

At least you have gun laws over there Stacey we don't even have that. I quite fancied the totally green death shoot meself and fall overboard in shark infested waters - low cost green solution - except for one minor detail ........I get very very seasick and have to take to my bed!!!!!

Who am I to question someones choice pertaining to their own life.. I'm not the one looking at deaths doorstep..

I think having my loved ones hanging around my bed is cruel..

It takes a long time to get that image out of your head.. I've seen it waaay more than I wanted to...

I haven't sited a movie quote in a while but here's one: "suicide is the ultimate act of self-absorption." - The Big Chill. I use to be very anti suicide. Largely because of what it does to the people left behind. My brother had a good friend who gassed himself in the family RV after his gambling addition took every cent his family had, he had huge debts, lost his job unbeknownst to his wife and the house was going into foreclosure - also unbeknownst to his wife. He left a wife and two high school aged kids. My brother still struggles with the guilt "I should have known..." Here in Oregon we were the first to allow Death with Dignity and while still against suicide I recognize and agree there is a place for allowing the terminally ill to choose to end their suffering. And talk about thoses left behind - often left penniless and damaged both physically and certainly mentally, most of us know first hand the damage "the long goodbye" can do. Btw - isn't that a ridculously charming phrase for the horror that is dementia? A few of my parents friends chose Death with Dignity - one was a man with brain cancer. Sparing his family the continuing devastation of watching his disease torture and ravage him was defiantly a most un- self absorbed act!

For me - the potential for abuse or pressuring those who don't want to die but who society views as "past their useful lives" is so great that in only support right to die in the event of terminal illness. We don't know the "why" of why there are so many people with dementia who live for so many years and we perceive them "better off dead". I'm not yet ready to go that far. Perhaps that is what makes us human - we feel called to care for those who cannot care for themselves and yet we don't decide that they should die. Good topic

kimber, what you said is so true. My mother has had dementia for over 10 years now most likely, but she doesn't wish to be dead. She may make everyone around her wish they were, but she is still enjoying life. :-D

That is a broken grin at the end of the sentence. :-D

Millions of people suffered from polio for many many years. Millions suffer from MS or COPD or schizophrenia or narcissism. In many cases they have decent quality of life; in others the quality of their lives is questionable and they sure can be a burden to society and/or their loved ones.

As vstefans and others point out, determining quality of life is very subjective and the trickiest part of this whole topic is who subjectively determines it?

Early in his dementia my husband would have eagerly signed up for assisted suicide. I'm glad it wasn't available. (I flatly refused to participate in that train of thought.) He had another nine years of mostly pleasant life with lots of high-quality episodes. He was mostly lucid (with lots of confusion) right up to his death, which occurred in our bedroom, with us holding hands.I am glad to have had those additional years with him, and I think he was too.

Death is such a permanent resolution. Life is such an unpredictable process.

No, it would not make sense to euthanize them. If it did, we would start with people void of feelings for others, such as Kaydi12 and bill collectors.

Oh dang, that's harsh Pam, throw in a few cuss words and you'd rate right up there with Captain!
And here I promised myself I wouldn't get drawn into this debate again....

You go, pamstrgma! I'll take someone who tells it like it is over someone blowing smoke up my skirt any day of the week! Captain - if you read this be gentel over the smoke up my skirt reference!

I think if people are in a terminal state and in great pain then shortening their death rather than endlessly prolonging it for no good purpose other than that the doctors can is something I find distasteful but know it happens and happens a lot.

Can I just flip this for a moment

If the doctors could keep your loved one alive for years but only through heavy medication and in a virtual comatose state in order that they can cash in on them living would you think this was OK? See this is where I really have a problem.

For me I am very clear no way Jose I don't want to live - that's my choice , but for others?..... I don't want to have to make those choices but there are things to be considered here.

I don't know how it works in the states but I wonder if the same end of life care plans are put in place for those with vast sums of money as for those who have nothing. If so then I feel a little better - if not then you already have the beginnings of a financially based euthanisation programme whether or not you actually agreed to one. And that is something I find abhorrent even though I approve and want for myself to die with dignity. Just give me the meds and let me go peacefully.

Jack Kevorkian was vilified in the media and made out to be some kind of ghoulish "Dr Death" who went around murdering people, and at the time I swallowed that line. I am still adamantly against euthanasia, but in my understanding what Kevorkian offered was much closer to assisted dying than euthanasia.
I have heard from some of the people that do home care how patients will try to secretly hoard a stash of pills in case they one day need them, as if they should be ashamed. I think to have to plan and execute that plan in secret or to have to ask a family member for help is what would cause the most harm to family left behind. If we felt free to discuss things with our family and health care team and put a plan into place openly then I think a lot of the guilt can be taken out of the equation.

Being the movie geek I am - I can't help but say Al Pacino did an excellent job playing him. Can't recall the movies name but it's worth a watch.

Okay - it was called "You Don't Know Jack" and it was an HBO movie. Pacino got an Emmy for his portrayal.

OH yeah....Kevorkian, Dr death and his lawyer, Jeffery Feiger. I've always agreed with the concept of assited suicide but these guys were too wacky to be taken seriously. Rather than bring forth any intelligent discussion of the issue they doomed it forevermore.