Living will is fine and good and everyone should have one. The problem is that dementia, by itself, is not a direct cause of death. You can live for years with severe dementia but be otherwise completely healthy. Two members of my family lived out their last years like that.
My wife and I are moving to a state that allows assisted suicide after our kids are out of the house. Neither of us want to live like that or be remembered like that.
Here in europe, for what I know, there is a serious problem for getting assisted suicide (in the states that legalized it) for something like dementia because when you have still few effects related to it they can't accept to eutanize you because you are not in a quality of life threating condition, and once the sympthomes are more brutal you cannot get eutanized either because you are no more legally considered capable of making conscious decisions and you must be capable of it _at the moment_ of the procedure, it's not valid to give the authorization before.
In context: “when you have still few effects related to it they can't accept to eutanize you because you are not in a quality of life threating condition”
All people over 75 (and, probably, way earlier) are slowly losing their mind. Early stage dementia isn’t that different from ‘just’ aging in that.
The ethical dilemma with living wills is that they always state a past opinion. It also is well-known from various studies that opinions on when you deem your life worth it shift tremendously over time.
With dementia, locked-in syndrome, etc, that’s a catch-22, as there’s no way to ask you about your opinion, or even to know whether there is someone to have an opinion anymore.
So, that you say “If I get wheelchair-bound/bedridden/don’t know my name anymore, I don’t want to live anymore” now doesn’t imply at all that you will think the same if it were to happen to you.
⇒ If you have a living will, be sure to regularly acknowledge or update it.
Also if you do manage to commit suicide no one pays out on life insurance or pension.
Best option I think is to start with nothing and end with nothing. The above problem is void then. That fortunate bit in the middle needs to be distributed to your children then if they need it.
Nah I’m good. Just watched a couple of people suffer unnecessarily for the sake of a life insurance contract. Figured it was worth checking out before I threw the cash into one.
>>>My wife and I are moving to a state that allows assisted suicide after our kids are out of the house. Neither of us want to live like that or be remembered like that.
Same - but even in places where assisted suicide is legal, it's often not available for cases of dementia. In my jurisdiction you must be terminally ill and of sound mind at the time you request medically assisted death; you can't set something up in advance, can't give power of attorney to another, can't qualify based on dementia alone, and if you happen to have, say, dementia and cancer, probably can't request it because of your dementia specifically.
It's a tough problem to be sure, and I hope it gets well sorted out before I hit old age.
I also want something like a Turing test to determine if I should be kept alive.
The best criteria I've come up with so far is: able to use toilet, able to maintain hygiene, aware of self (name, age), aware of world (rough calendar knowledge, recognize friends and family).
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We had two family members warehoused in a long term facility who were not allowed to die. As in stopped eating, so were given feeding tubes. Extraordinary efforts to keep them alive. Their DNRs were ineffective. They became vegetables with bank accounts.
Their executor (my mother) got nutty about the whole thing. Her own dementia made her totally irrational, whereas had been very humane just a decade earlier.
And the facility and various care providers were only too happy to keep them alive. (One of the other inmates had been there 11 years. Not a single outside contact. Complete vegetable. How is that right?)
(Were the two victims still lucid, they'd be livid about pointless life extension at great suffering and expense.)
I told my kids to not ever, ever let me end up like that. I've had an amazing run. The end will suck, sure, but no sense getting fussy about it.
Let me pass with some dignity, while I can still say goodbye to everyone properly. Don't waste my money. Don't let me suffer.
You may be confusing living will with a last will and testament.
It may be helpful to think of a living will as "health care directives". So that now, while you don't have dementia, you can spell out your wishes and who has the authority to act on said wishes, when you can no longer make decisions.
Which state? Oregon has an assisted suicide law but it doesn't cover dementia. I'd love to hear about which ones do as I also formed this plan after seeing my father go through it.
My wife and I are moving to a state that allows assisted suicide after our kids are out of the house. Neither of us want to live like that or be remembered like that.