Fear of getting old myself, and the option. Does anyone else feel like this?

Yes. I'm about to be 70. I am still quite healthy, relatively fit and have a good relationship with my kids.

But I can feel my cognitive skills diminishing and am not looking forward to becoming less able.

So far my plan has been to live in my handicap accessible apartment with numerous services close by and bring in more help aside from the housecleaning I already have.

I hope to be able to be as gracious and compliant as my mom was when we told her that we couldn't and wouldn't respond to her many emergencies.

Yes, I suspect more people feel as you do than you’d think. But there’s not much talk about it, is there? It’s a topic that is suppressed.

My friend recoiled in horror when I asked her what she thought about accessible death with dignity. “We can’t kill our old people,” she said. She believes that death with dignity opens the door for children to kill their parents for convenience’s sake or for their inheritance.

However, my friend has never been a caregiver or watched her parents die a slow and agonizing death. If she had, she might think differently.

I wish physician-assisted death were available in every state.

I think that not "many" but "MOST" feel as you do.
Fawnby and Bundleofjoy have already posted what I would want to contribute to the thread.

I will also tell you that even when people have a means (having qualified for right to die laws currently in place) they seldom make use of that means. Life is very precious, and we seem always to end up with "not today" when we have that vial available.

I think our having the means to our end within our own control would be a great comfort.

I think everyone in the world feels just like you do. Who doesn't want to be in the full bloom of youth forever? To start I would strongly suggest that you stop or at least cut back on how much time you spend volunteering in the nursing home. Maybe try volunteering with a different roup and not the elderly.

I was an in-home caregiver mostly to elderly for 25 years and have also had the responsibility of my mother's neediness for decades. It got worse with time and I don't handle it anymore.
What happened to me is that because I was day in and day out among the elderly and everything that comes with it, that I dreaded being around the elderly.
I never had any patience for senior games. I never tolerated any kind of verbal abuse or instigating. I got to the point where I have no patience for any of it. So I got out. You should too.

Stop volunteering with the elderly because you need a break from them. It's so draining and exhausting.
Take up a hobby instead. Something you enjoy. Go back to school. Learn a new language. Travel. Learn how to paint or make pottery. Anything. Get away from the elderly for a while.

You're only in your 50's. You've got time yet.

I'm somewhat traumatized by my parents' ends, but I'd prefer my dad's exit to my mother's. He was diagnosed with inoperable cancer after having no symptoms except an enlarged abdomen, and he died six weeks later after spending most of that time calling friends and family telling them how much he appreciated having them in his life. It was all about others and never about himself, but that's the kind of man he was.

My mom had dementia and heart failure and was failing for seven years. She was supposed to go first, but of course, it didn't go that way. I felt terrible having to move her to a nursing home three days after my dad's memorial service and wish we could have allowed her to stay home longer, but their house was just not elder-friendly and couldn't be made to be so.

I now constantly think about aging and the inevitable frailties coming my way. The way I deal with it is with a house we just bought and are remodeling. It's single story, doesn't have any steps to enter it, and I'm having it remodeled to be the home of an 80-year-old even though I'm 62. We're putting in a curbless shower, backing in the studs for grab bars that will be installed eventually in the showers and all bathrooms, and I'm not putting in a single unit stove/oven, because I don't want to bend over to get things out of the oven. (Like I'll be cooking much at 80! 🙄)

Everything is being done to ADA standards, and I'm glad I have the ability to do it. I have my parents and the sale of their beloved house to thank for this. I hope to die in this house, but my children know that if it needs to be sold if we need to go to a nursing home, so be it.

I hope to go as my dad did, but I'm preparing for my mom's scenario. It's the best I can do.

Before medical assistance in dying became legal in Canada some people kept a stash of just in case meds (according to my mom's PSW it was more common than you might think). My mom had a medication for her headaches that I thought would do the job very nicely (fiorinal with codeine), I was tempted to hold on to those but in the end I turned them in for proper disposal.

Good topic.

My parents took care of my grandmothers for a very long time. Neither grandmother had dementia, but one ended up in nursing home for physical issues. When my dad broke his tail bone and was not able to do much any longer he took his own life, leaving a note to the effect that he did not want his children to be burdened with his care the way he and my mom had been, and especially did not want to be in the horrors of nursing home. He and my mom had actually planned a double suicide, but he could see she was not ready, and went alone. She did not know his plan.

I can tell you that the shock of hearing about the violence of his death has not left me yet. It was over 10 years ago. However, I have a good friend whose wife is going to have a legal medical assisted suicide soon. I can see that she is in constant pain, has very little energy, and cannot live her normal life in any way, is not depressed, but simply wants out of what her life has become. Her plan is out in the open and is not violent. My friend is struggling with it, so his wife is waiting for him to come to terms with it.

I am grateful to my dad for leaving my mom with me to care for. Had he taken her along in their death pact, I would have never gotten to know her the way I did. It is those final years that I really got to know the strength of her character, even with the Alzheimer's. My mom, sister, and brother all died peaceful deaths. I still remember their personalities, quirks and all, daily. My dad's death haunts me in a different way.

I don't have any answers for myself about life and death, no matter how much time I spend reading, thinking, writing, and painting about it. It is all a mystery. But I do want to say that to think you might burden your children to care for you is not necessarily the way it will turn out. My mom somehow needed that extra time to continue her adventure into the unknown lands of Alzheimer's and I was honored to accompany her on the ride, as difficult and weird as it was. I learned so much.

I think about this all the time. What would I do? Just let nature take it's course? Or end it. I am very healthy at 56, but there may come a time that this is not the case. I think I would just stop taking any and all meds and let myself naturally die. I think it would be easy for me to do this since I don't like doctors and I don't take any medicine except tylenol. My mother on the other hand takes at least 15 different prescriptions to keep her miserable self in existance. Why? I don't know. I'd just stop. But you know...that's what I say now. Who really knows what I will do when that time comes.

I'm not going to lie and say this hasn't crossed my mind, more than once. I'm in a different - and scarier - situation: I'm not married, I don't have kids, I'm irreparably estranged from my sisters, who are older than me (I'm 58, they are 68 and 73), I don't have a relationships with my nieces and nephews, nor do I want one. My mother is in a nursing home, where she will likely die. I am alone in the world and my health isn't great. I worry all the time about what I will do in the future if things get worse. Suicide would be the best choice, as sad as that is.

although i totally understand you (the idea of trying to plan a potential suicide dignity-style, so as to avoid potentially very difficult, old age)...

i think when the time comes, 99% of people change their mind. they want to LIVE.

the survival instinct is soooo strong, that when the time comes (let's say age 89, some old-age trouble...), one wants to live...one continues...even when one notices the memory is slipping, even when one is aware dementia is coming (and one vowed to oneself to commit suicide), one fights to live.