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[Jimmy]

"It's not like the rest of us, but it should be."

http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2011/11/30/how-doctors-die/read/nexus/

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

Agreed.

[GlyphGryph]

I've already made it quite clear in that sort of situation, that is what I would choose as well.

Our society values life at the cost of living far too highly for my taste, often because of the selfish reasoning of others.

Very few people get the opportunity to choose the terms of how they die - I can understand wanting to go down fighting the inevitable, I suppose, but I couldn't see making that sort of decision for myself.

I'm a much bigger fan of giving people the opportunity to die on their own terms, but one needs only look at the fallout from assisted suicide to see societies general opinions on that... Even its supporters often only feel its appropriate in a very limited number of situations.

[Levi]

Well, you guys will be unhappy to know that if I ever get a horrible disease, I'm going to drain the health care system of every cent I can trying to stay alive. 

Death is a horrible thing and I don't care how much money is spent trying to prevent it.

[mainiac]

Death is a horrible thing and I don't care how much money is spent trying to prevent it.

There are fate's worse then death...

[Shades]

There are fate's worse then death...

Not in the long term...

[Criptfeind]

Death is a horrible thing and I don't care how much money is spent trying to prevent it.

There are fate's worse then death...

But not necessarily always a lot of them.

[Dutchling]

There are fate's worse then death...

Not in the long term...

Isn't there a Greek god somewhere who still gets his intestines eaten everyday?

[mainiac]

I thought Hercules rescued him.

Derail complete.

[Criptfeind]

He was a Titan.

But Loki is getting snake spit still...

[Necro910]

Death is a horrible thing and I don't care how much money is spent trying to prevent it.

There are fate's worse then death...

This.

There are fate's worse then death...

Not in the long term...

Isn't there a Greek god somewhere who still gets his intestines eaten everyday?

Prometheus, titan, gets his liver torn out erryday by a giant eagle.

Livers grow really fast, actually. I wonder how long it would actually take to regrow half of your liver...

[Willfor]

Well, you guys will be unhappy to know that if I ever get a horrible disease, I'm going to drain the health care system of every cent I can trying to stay alive. 

Death is a horrible thing and I don't care how much money is spent trying to prevent it.

At a certain point, life is a horrible thing, and there are some people who would spend a lot of money to end it comfortably. There are forms of pain that medical science can't manage yet, and forms of pain that are too expensive for the average person to afford to manage. For some people it can get to the point where the thought of absolute nothingness* is a comfort instead of crime.

For me, life is my ability to live. Being hooked up to a life support system, unable to function outside of it, unable to communicate ... well it sounds more like torture than life to me. I would no longer be living, I would be a pain machine with an arbitrary amount of brain activity that someone else has determined makes me 'alive'. Maybe I would see things differently once I get there, I don't know, but it doesn't sound like living to me.

* Given that I am a Christian, I should probably insert Heaven here, but the thought of Heaven is not the reason I'm a Christian. In the event that I'm wrong, I'm not afraid of nothingness.

[kaijyuu]

Perhaps the real point to take away from this is the choice being given to the person dying, not anyone else.

If someone wants to extend their life as much as possible, that's fine.
If someone wants to end it there, that's fine.

No one else has final say in the matter.

[Shades]

Prometheus, titan, gets his liver torn out erryday by a giant eagle.

Given a long enough time, and forever is a pretty long one, you can get used to repetitive pain like this and mostly ignore it. Don't forget too the rest of his day is spent lazying around in the sun relaxing.

Perhaps the real point to take away from this is the choice being given to the person dying, not anyone else.

If someone wants to extend their life as much as possible, that's fine.
If someone wants to end it there, that's fine.

No one else has final say in the matter.

This is of course the most important point. Although a lot of the times its not up to that person for one reason or another.

[MonkeyHead]

I would make the same choice. What use is a life lived in pain where you are a burden to those you love? Better to leave with dignity and to give those you leave behind good memories, not ones of you in a mess.

[GlyphGryph]

Perhaps the real point to take away from this is the choice being given to the person dying, not anyone else.

And studies have shown patients can not really make this choice without information and those willing to talk to them about the alternatives, something our medical system doesn't offer and families are generally loathe to do. The only choice it offers "Keep fighting until it breaks you down and you die, miserable, a drain on your family and friends and little more, so that is the memory they hold of you, making their own depression and even suicide almost four times more likely".

So there's that as well. End of life counseling has been shown to make all those involved far happier and far more capable of making the decision on their own than the current "talk about life only, never about death" medical climate, where patients are pretty much robbed of important information and set afloat. It's a shame opportunities for this counseling were removed from the healthcare bill because some people considered them "Death Panels".