Should someone who has Alzheimer's--especially the early-onset kind--have the right to end his or her life before it gets to the point of being placed in a Memory Care floor with assistance for daily life tasks such as bathing and dressing or even eating?
The prospect of wearing Depends and needing personal assistance is humiliating.
How can we respond when a friend or loved one expresses a wish to die before this point?
No one wants a long period of wasting away. On the other hand, no one wants to die in a car accident or plane crash. Ordinarily we don't get a lot of choice in how or when our life ends.
Nevertheless, I want to affirm someone who expresses the wish to avoid long-term care, possibly when unable to recognize friends and family. It's important to share our feelings with friends and family and to cry out to God.
In a post on December 6, 2014, I rather flippantly said "Why bother to make such wishes? The bottom line is that we don't get to choose when to clock out... unless we oppose both law and custom."
I'd like to say now that I respect the decision to end life through physician-assisted suicide in a case of terminal illness, even Alzheimer's.
There needs to be a way to express this wish on paper, legally, before one gets to the point where one's decisions are impaired by dementia and one is seen as not competent to make this choice.
On the other hand, treatments to halt and even reverse impairment with Alzheimer's are already being tested. See the February 11, 2016, issue of Time Magazine with this cover story by Alice Park:
I have a friend who has said he would shoot himself first if he were on the verge of being put on an Alzheimer's care. Is it a blessing that he has since had two strokes and one ablation surgery for atrial fibrillation? Despite having one parent who died of Alzheimer's, it looks as if he is not headed for a Memory Care floor--unless by stroke.
