Terry Pratchett’s Suicide Plans
Here’s an interesting article from London’s Daily Mail, by the English novelist Terry Pratchett.
It begins:
“How did I get involved in the debate surrounding assisted death? It was by accident, after taking a long and, yes, informed look at my future as someone with Alzheimer’s.
As a result of my coming out about the disease after I was diagnosed at the age of 59, I have contacts in medical research circles all over the world, and I have no reason to believe a cure is imminent.
I do think, on their good advice, that there may be some interesting developments in the next couple of years, and I’m not the only one to hope for some kind of stepping stone - a treatment that will keep me going long enough for a better one to be developed.
I enjoy my life and wish to continue it for as long as I am still myself, knowing who I am and recognising my nearest and dearest.
But I know enough about the endgame to be fearful of it, despite the fact that as a wealthy man I could probably shield myself from the worst. But even the wealthy, whatever they may do, have their appointment with death.
Back in my early days as a journalist, I was told something that surprised me at the time: no one has to do what the doctor tells them.”
Pratchett goes on to claim that he won’t let the dementia he’s been diagnosed with overwhelm him, that he’ll take his own life with the time comes.
There’s the rub: when the time comes. How does one ever know? And with dementia getting abiggger and bigger foothold, one day the Alzheimer’s patient will forget about his suicide plans, so carefully thought out.
Here was my response to the Daily Mail’s online comment board:
I completely agree with Terry Pratchett about assisted suicide. But consider my father, who felt just the same. He joined the Hemlock Society, he built up a supply of sleeping pills (back when Nembutal was still available to the U.S. public). Then, at the age of 91, his memory and language left him. At some point he no longer remembered his stash of pills. He hadn’t wanted to live while bedbound, incontinent and oblivious—but that was a decision he forgot.
More than that, he wanted to live. That’s what I saw in the year I took care of him—that he didn’t want to die. When he was ready he made it clear. Eight days before his death he began to plead with me, “Please help me get out of here. Help me, I have to get out of here, can’t you help me get out of here?” But before that week he held to life.
It makes me wonder about myself. Like my father before me, I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want to live through a protracted and painful decline—and I’ve kept the pills he never used. But my guess is that no matter I feel now, when the time comes I’ll probably hold on just as tightly as he did, and far longer than I can imagine now.
Tags: alzheimer's, caregiving, memory, nursing homes, Terry Pratchett
