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I did giggle when one carer mentioned a friend who would dress up as a deer and runs through the woods during the hunting season. But as most seem to be in agreement that dementia is NOT something we want I did ask a few friends.

One of them said he never wants to be a burden on his family. He has a plan. You do have to remember from the get go that in the UK we have different laws and bearing arms is not a right.

He says he has bought an inflatable dinghy and has a gun with a full round in it which. He intends to take the dinghy out into the ocean lay down and shoot himself - that way the dinghy will deflate and the sharks will get him no mess.

This darling man has late stage dementia, lives with his daughter in the city and is wheelchair bound, bladder and bowel incontinent god love him. His daughter has cared for him full time for the last 5 years and I had never ever heard him speak before. Even she said it is rare for him to say much more than 4 or 5 words. So in this stark brief moment did he show us his true desires or was it just the dementia.

What would be your choice. I rather fancy arriving at the pearly gates on the back of a Harley, but that could be tricky...I would just like to be able to say OK ......that's it ......time to go and whoosh be gone. The great maker of this universe did a pretty crap job when it comes to end of life......pity not as much thought went into that as into the creation of life!!!!! death could have been so much more fun!!!!

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Good question. I wouldn't want anyone to feel responsible, feeling that if they were home this wouldn't happen type of thing. Guess I would choose going in my sleep naturally once I felt I was no longer contributing to society. Now, where is that OFF switch?
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veterans have been known to park in a va parking lot and eat a handfull of narcotic pain patches . i could deal with that method but i wouldnt want to traumatize innocent spectators or even medical personnel for that matter .
i think id like to live at home until my final days or weeks then crappy off at a hospice facility . i wouldnt necessarily want my kids to have to administer the meds that they know are going to knock me out forever .
im a very ' outside the box ' person . id like to take the heart / breath stopping meds myself because its noones business moreso than mine .
a " dog pill " is not far off imo . the usa drags its feet behind more free thinking europeans for only a while due to the influence of christianity in this country but that drivel is on the wane and as always we'll move forward with a great leap .
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If most people knew the date and time, they would run up their credit cards, shoot the ex spouse and have second thoughts about going and try to talk their way out of it. It's better not to know. I had a friend who could read palms. She stopped doing it, because people only wanted to hear the good stuff. She saw the bad stuff too, horrible things, that she could not share and that was a huge burden
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It's a great shame that the greatandgood put an end to the "Brompton Cocktail", Jude - heroin, cocaine and morphine, shaken not stirred presumably, and administered i.v. to consumption patients at the Brompton Chest Hospital as was.

I wouldn't say so if I thought there were any chance his parents might get to hear of it, but when that young lad from Eton got killed by a hungry polar bear on the school trip I remember thinking that if you were told you had to go at age 18, then "fight with a bear" might be quite high on many a brave schoolboy's list of options. Or perhaps you'd like Roger McGough's poem "Let me die a young man's death" on the subject. And not that I want to pour cold water or anything, but I think it's worth pointing out that most of the time we don't get offered a choice. Of the myriad ways to die currently available, how many attract actual volunteers?

I can tell you what I definitely *don't* fancy - a paramedic thumping me in the chest and screeching "stay with us darlin'!!!" while her colleague plugs me into the national grid. Note to self: get artistic DNR tattoo.
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Like my grandfather, I would like to die in my sleep.
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Just to stimulate discussion a bit more. The notion " first do no harm " forms part of the hippocratic oath so with that in mind I dont want a paramedic breaking my ribs when he thumps my chest cos that IS harm especially if one of the ribs punctures the lungs just a few pence. Oddly enough it would never have crossed my mind to build up terrible debts and that can soon be solved by making sure you are solvent before releasing approval. I think I would like to be medicated to total unconsciousness and then tossed to the sharks - an eco-friendly way using apex predators to solve the burial problem
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CM you forgot the gin in the Bromptom cocktail. Still prescribed in the early 60s.

I had one patient who had a T shirt nightgown made with an EKG flat line on it and DNR in big red letters. None of the family knew about it till she asked her daughter to get it for her. It was quite a shock when you walked into the house. She wore that for the last couple of days of her life
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