How long can people live like this?

Absolutely not for you to judge when someone else’s life is spent.

Yeah, the answer to the NHS’s problems is to take all the elderly out the back and shoot them, I agree!!!!

Maybe you could go first? Since you’re so keen to volunteer others’ lives to save the NHS.

Why don't you go back and re-read what that lady actually wrote? Your poor comprehension is depressingly predictable.

Sorry, I was editing while you posted. No, you don’t know. It’s one thing to say that when you know it won’t come to anything. It could well be depression talking, not a genuine wish to die. Maybe they aren’t getting enough visits.

Covid was an eye-opener because medicine had no solutions for nine months. It ripped through the elderly population, particularly those in nursing homes. Yet it was not for most people a fatal or deeply damaging infection. (I'm not underplaying how vicious it was.) It made me realise how drugs and vaccines are delaying the inevitable in the frail elderly. If we didn't have a massive flu and now Covid vaccine programme every year, many of those old people would die of pneumonia, as they used to, because the body has lost its ability to fight infection. I don't know why we are so deaf to what the body is telling us, and its own logic - in most cases, it's spent.

It's the American model. It doesnt work in a free at point of use system - it is destroying the NHS. Which is exactly what American health companies want. They are already circling like vultures.

Until our increasingly stupid population can have adult conversations about geriatric and end of life care, we are fkd.

Yeah, exactly.

You are obviously missing the empathy gene lets just shoot the lot of them...maybe one day you may be injured in bed or lose an arm or leg or have a horrific accident, shall we shoot you too or is it just old people?

You do know if they tell you though.

But for most people the choice won't be a binary option of "die with dignity" v "riddled with dementia". Only about 10% of people get dementia even in older age groups.

For a lot more people it's likely to be "I'll like decent cancer/heart failure treatment please" and "I'd like decent palliative care please" and "I'd like decent palliative end of life care please". None of which will be improved while assisted dying is an option. Let's spend money on improving actual health care and end of life care first and also help people with disabilities who have to fight for any kind of assistance.

I worry that if AD is an option that will become THE option if you get seriously ill over the age of 70. There are too many right wing nut jobs hanging about the offices of power these days and god help us if they get in.

Does this include the lady who says she left granny in a tent to die? Surely hers takes the top spot on the disgust level?

She said she's never had a breast cancer screening - they start in your late 40s/50s so that's quite young to decide you wouldn't have the cancer treatment and die naturally!

A relative has had a hip operation at 96.

It’s not for you to judge their lives. For all you know, they’re still enjoying TV/radio/chocolate/visits and don’t want to die. It’s all very well wishing for death when there’s no chance a relative can give the go-ahead for a medic to bear down on you with a big needle. It might be depression more than a genuine wish to die. Also, killing someone is not straightforward. See the botched execution with drugs in the US just now. And yes, OP, you do sound callous. They’re not ill, just old. Step away for a while if your thoughts are going down these paths.

I find the resultant discussion of euthanasia on this thread sinister and frightening. THIS is why people are against it. Relatives will be like “Oh, this is terrible for all concerned; just put us all out of our misery.” And if the patient is at all compos mentis, can you imagine the pressure they might feel to give in to euthanasia so that their families can get their lives back and maybe get their inheritance, too? Just no.

What would you do?

It's the unintended consequences of amazing, modern medicine. Keeps many people going into their 80s/90s/100s but with no quality of life whatsoever, unfortunately.

I want it for me too! I have plenty of money and I don't mind spending it on my care - but I don't want to be kept alive if I can't control my bodily functions and I have no quality of life - that's a personal choice that I will be denied.
And it seems that even when you make a request for no medical intervention, except pain relief doctors can override this - it's totally unacceptable.

I do.

I recognise this - and assume that big change between 1995 and now is Shipman. He was an evil man who ended a huge amount of lives deliberately and maliciously but it seems one of the knock on impacts is less fudging about what good geriatric, end of life medicine might look like - instead it’s intervention after intervention unless there are some quite forceful conversations. (I’m not a doctor or a lawyer, just guessing…)

And who wants to be accused of wanting to kill their loved ones? “Mum would have hated living like this, does she need to take those statins every day whilst you spoon feed her” is a tricky one to have.

I think you missed the point - it's not a risk if you have decided not to take the treatment for cancer, if you don't want to live to 100 and be utterly incapable of taking care of their normal bodily functions. Everyone has to die of something.

You are totally right. The Hypocratic Oath has a lot to answer for.
My granny got to within a few weeks of her 90th birthday, born in 1888.
Was compos mentis until she fell over and broke her hip. She was looked after very well, but the doctor told my mother that they would keep her comfortable until the inevitable senior pneumonia took its course, which it did.
Whilst I understand that relatives, etc. want to keep people alive, I find this incredibly selfish.

You've misunderstood. I want it for myself.
Any vet who recommended withdrawing food and water from an immobilised, dementia suffering cat or dog would be in trouble. It took 7 weeks for someone I know to starve to ďeath on the Liverpool pathway. I saw her every day of it.

I wonder how many people would rather die with dignity rather than riddled with dementia. I also think if care wasn’t provided free by the tax payer, then lots of people would think very differently.
Would you keep a beloved pet alive for years, in pain just prolonging the inevitable? Or would you put them to sleep?
Yet humans are kept artificially alive and for what? So they can live an extra number of years not knowing where they are, believing they are still young, crying for their dead spouse or parents who they truly believe have left them in the care home they live in. Shitting themselves, having to be washed and dressed by some randomer. At rocking in a chair. Even when they have moments of knowing who thy are, they are surrounded by others who are losing their minds, how awful. Frightened and in pain.

No thanks.
I’d rather die a couple of years earlier and not put my children and husband through that, or myself.

Agree

Your post disgusts me more than anything else I've read here. You should be ashamed of writing something so utterly stupid. People have shared deeply personal stories of elderly relatives praying for death and that's your only response? Are you in the USA by any chance? People there are kept alive forever - if they can pay for it. Everyone who can't is told to fuck off and die already.