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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

to wonder what the hell we're actually going to die of

83 replies

RebeccaWithTheGoodHair · 23/11/2016 10:24

I've wanted to ask this for a while but have held off for fear of being insensitive. So if you are someone with a relative ill at the moment I apologise in advance if my question is upsetting at all.

But it is a genuine AIBU to ask if the aim is to cure everyone of cancer/heart disease/everything what is going to be left for us to die of/with?

OP posts:
SlottedSpoon · 23/11/2016 12:18

I'm with you ilove

sterlingcooper · 23/11/2016 12:31

Nanotechnology is the likely successor to antibiotics, but will we get there quickly enough?

iloveeverykindofcat · 23/11/2016 12:32

Interestingly I've spoken to many doctors who share my opinion - the watershed for many is that they would OD before being admitted to a nursing home. But the laws are very clear are the moment. Vets, I find, have much more freedom to act in the interests of their patients!

SurlyValentine · 23/11/2016 12:46

Rebecca what would I want to die of? Are you Gozer from Ghostbusters and a 100 foot Staypuft marshmallow man is about to destroy me? Grin

I think either a massive heart attack or a huge stroke killing me pretty much instantly would be my choice. I don't want weeks, months or years of ill health dragging on, getting gradually worse.

iloveeverykind Unfortunately, my DP is one who does believe in life at any cost Hmm He wants pumping full of any drugs there are to keep him alive for as long as possible. I just don't understand it.

Sukey It's truly cruel that your dad has developed dementia at that young an age. It's robbed him of his retirement. My grandmother was 85 when she died and, like I said, had only been really bad for two to three years before that, so in a way she was lucky. I really do feel for you Sad

Mistletoetastic · 23/11/2016 12:53

Rebeccawiththegoodhair there won't be cures for everything in that list in the near to mid future, I think the really difficult ones are brain related, Stroke and Dementia.

With Lung issues if we eradicate the infections there is still natural demise, not everyone is eligible for a transplant.

Cancer has been researched for over 40 years, with great advances but it is still no.2 in the list.

user1471451684 · 23/11/2016 12:54

I would like to survive the nuke! Having the whole country to myself! Scavenger hunts growing food just having to avoid the crater that was a big city

pinkdelight · 23/11/2016 13:04

This is a really great book. Should answer a lot of your questions and isn't at all depressing. Makes you think about how we live as much as how we die.

www.amazon.co.uk/How-We-Die-Reflections-Chapter-ebook/dp/0679742441/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479906195&sr=1-2&keywords=how+we+die

Lorelei76 · 23/11/2016 13:09

Id want quick heart attack
But given my accident prone nature...!!!

SomewhatIdiosyncratic · 23/11/2016 13:30

I've lost several relatives from 48 to 91.
The saddest was my DF who was in his early 50s and died suddenly of a heart attack having his active life cut short. Most have been 80+. DGF died shortly of a stroke and faded away while he was in hospital. He'd never got over the shock of losing his son so young, and didn't want to be frail and dependent. DGGM was 91- I swear she lived so long by conserving her energy by sitting in a chair for over 20 years while others tended to her! She died with 24 hours of a fall despite prompt care. The 48 year old lived in a care home due to severe learning difficulties. They tend to age very quickly there and go from a long youth to suddenly being elderly after about 45. He'd increasingly suffered depression following a couple of bereavements and retreated deeper and deeper within himself. Although young in years, his death was a relief in that he'd lived out his potential and there was little joy left ahead for him. It was very similar to when elderly relatives had slipped away.

It is good that research and development is preventing the death of people who are active and otherwise enjoying life. I see little point in great efforts to maintain life in the face of pain, very limited opportunities and most importantly a loss of will and enjoyment of life. Death will involve suffering for the bereaved, either through a shock or through deteriorating health beforehand.

Something will get us all in the end whether it is an existing illness or some new condition. I'm happy to accept that I'm not immortal, but I want to make the most of my life first. Treatments should be about enhancing life (e.g. delaying deterioration of conditions like Alzheimer's) rather than used to prolong all life for the sake of it.

As for how I'd like to go? I'd like to keep healthy and active as long as possible. Going quietly in my sleep would be fine. Failing that, after a short illness so that it wasn't too shocking for my loved ones, but with little suffering or frustration at a life lived long after its best before date.

TheInternetIsForPorn · 23/11/2016 13:39

My money is on some new virus or illness wiping out a large number of the population of the world in the next few hundred years. Human numbers are becoming / already are unsustainable and nature usually finds a way to even things out.

In the short term there are always accidents, self induced illness via bad health choices like smoking, etc. Even if we could cure everything something new would pop up.

SukeyTakeItOffAgain · 23/11/2016 13:42

Scavenger hunts growing food

With an added side dish of lethal radiation?

Not me. I'd stand right in the blast zone, and if I didn't, once the shit started hitting the fan, journey to the nearest high cliff.

Ideally though, it would be a lethal heart attack in my sleep at 75 to 80 or so. I wouldn't want years of painful immobility etc.

pennycarbonara · 23/11/2016 13:49

Interesting to see the clash of the two different strands of futuristic thinking in this thread, ones which too rarely get combined.

Just as we look back at people dying of childhood illnesses in their millions now and feel shocked, our descendants will feel shocked at the number of us who were killed by cancer, MS etc.
As for what we'll die of, the most likely thing is starvation due to over manipulation of crops leading to famine.

A society where the latter happens is one where the production and especially the continuing development of drugs for the former, for the masses in particular, is unlikely to go on.

Provision by state health services like the NHS, and insurers in the US is being squeezed more and more tightly and the idea that everyone is going to die of pure old age, cured of everything else, is about as likely as millions going to live on Mars within the next century. Increasing economic and geographic divisions and tightening of eligibility criteria for expensive procedures and drugs are already happening, and there isn't really an huge economic possibility of this changing. Some of the very rich will still have access to these things, but the financial incentive to develop lots more will be less as large scale buyers of treatments, like governments and insurers, can afford less.

I expect there will be several decades of increasing inequality and patchiness in treatment, with some people getting amazing care, others very little compared with the expectations they grew up with in the developed world, and as resource and populations stressors increase, there will be fewer very high tech drugs developed and less done for rarer issues.

Antibiotic resistance will make transplants much riskier, more people may opt not to have them or not to carry them out.

More and more countries, and US states are legalising euthanasia which on a macro scale fits with population trends. Britain lags because MPs majority opinions on the issue are opposite to the general population's majority opinions. There is still lingering idea of life being sacred from Christianity, although that developed at a time when people surviving the things they do now, being in near vegetative states, living decades with dementia, was simply not in the picture at all, it was about basic kindness and non violence. I am sure Britain will eventually catch up although it may take a good while given that views against it seem particularly entrenched in the legislative classes. (Curiously different from those in the arts and media too.)

Similarly I would not be surprised if there is eventually more of a push towards treating people who could be got back to work again over and above prolonging existence for people with dementia. But that is not going to change straight away because of the fears related to religion and the spectre of nazis.

On a more mundane note, there may be a lot more deaths from obesity related illnesses among generations in current youth and middle age than among baby boomers. That is the way it looks currently - and I think is what a lot of media commentators would say about "what will we all die of" . If climate change related food shortages do bite in a few decades, fewer people will be obese, although there may be lingering health complications from having been so.

RhodaBull · 23/11/2016 14:02

The problem with "checking out" rather than going into a nursing home is that once a person gets dementia then a) they are not able to make those decisions and b) they are not capable of it. Both pil have/had dementia and particularly mil strenuously denied any failing of faculties. Frankly, hands up, if someone told you you had early-stage dementia, would you agree? And then make plans to head off to a Swiss clinic?

From what I have seen elderly people, rather than being practical about their life span, become fixated on their health and wellbeing. I suppose we all have an innate desire to live, and it's all very well to say "Oh, I'll be fine to go at 80" when we're 40, but come 80 we'll be stampeding to the doctor's surgery with every minor ailment in our quest to head off the grim reaper.

pennycarbonara · 23/11/2016 14:14

Some do retain the same opinions - a relative has quoted "fourscore and ten" when both slightly younger and older than that, and is critical of others who actively choose to drag things out.

I am not sure that there isn't also something of a generational difference; many of the people who are in favour of "checking out" as you put it are currently middle aged, and more older people will have been religious or deferential to what happens naturally, and not thought and talked about these scenarios for as long.

RhodaBull · 23/11/2016 14:28

Yes, I suppose the middle-aged (that would be me Shock ) have seen people live too long lives, whereas the previous generation didn't often encounter such longevity.

In actual fact I think we might be going backwards in terms of life expectancy: my grandmother outlived 5 out of 6 dcs, and I seem to know a lot of people who are dying in their 60s. Meanwhile fil marches on aged 94: in perfect physical health but without a single marble.

Lorelei76 · 23/11/2016 16:10

Rhoda " suppose we all have an innate desire to live, and it's all very well to say "Oh, I'll be fine to go at 80" when we're 40, but come 80 we'll be stampeding to the doctor's surgery with every minor ailment in our quest to head off the grim reaper."

None of the people I've seen go have wanted that, DNR and treatment refusers abound.

iloveeverykindofcat · 24/11/2016 06:12

Lorelei I agree. My grandmother with dementia and parkinson's was absolutely 'ready to go' - but didn't have the DNR in place and my crazy aunt forced resuscitation. It was bad. People, if you know your decision, get a DNR in place while you can.

RhodaBull · 24/11/2016 12:24

Mil had a DNR in place but that's only when you're at death's door. For something like pneumonia, from which in the past you could gradually fade away (it was called "The Old Man's Friend") you will be hospitalised and given antibiotics. Had mil had her faculties I suppose she could have declined, but given that she had severe dementia she had no option. They revived a vegetable who sat in a chair grinning inanely for another two years. I know that sounds horrible but it was awful to behold someone who had been a strong proud dragon lady be reduced to... nothing.

The family had a Health & Welfare Power of Attorney, but this means nothing as medical practitioners have to abide by the hippocratic oath. Only right, I suppose, as otherwise people would be shipping off rich Aunt Adas at the least excuse.

SukeyTakeItOffAgain · 24/11/2016 12:46

Is there ANYTHING we can do to prevent my dad being loaded with antibiotics when/if he gets pneumonia? I literally cannot bear the idea of his life being prolonged medically. He doesn't even sit in a chair grinning inanely. He just sits in a chair looking blank.

Marynary · 24/11/2016 13:08

I think we're programmed to die regardless of whether we catch a specific illness or disease. I remember being told (in a lecture when I was doing my degree) that we would die at around 130 years if we didn't succumb to illness. Not sure how true that is (later studies may have revealed this to be crap) but we're never going to be immortal. I think the aim would be to stay in good health for as long as possible and then die suddenly because a vital organ fails.

Windanddrizzle · 24/11/2016 13:30

I find it difficult to understand why anyone would want an extended life expectancy - quality of life relies not only on good physical and cognitive health, but also healthy finances. I suspect assisted dying will eventually be legalised on pragmatic grounds, although no doubt ostensibly ethical grounds will be put forward.

I don't feel that death is the worst thing that can happen to someone - DC's GF has a condition (I can't remember the name) that combines motor neurone type symptoms with Alzheimer's - he is in a nursing home receiving excellent care, so lives on. He doesn't recognise his family, chokes when he eats and has no quality of life - his DC & GC love him dearly, but are hoping that he will die soon. By contrast, one of my relatives died suddenly and unexpectedly at 57 - even though he was very young and is missed by his family, I know which death I'd choose.

expatinscotland · 24/11/2016 13:37

I agree, Wind.

Lorelei76 · 24/11/2016 14:12

Sukey, wouldn't that be a horrible way to die though? I had pneumonia but I also have asthma so that might factor in my thinking but wouldn't you then die struggling for breath? I suppose maybe they can open up the airways somehow but even so, dying of an infection....

Basicbrown · 24/11/2016 22:03

I've seen both sides of it, my grandmother ended up in a home fading away over 5 years having lived a long full life. My own mother dropped down dead quite randomly and was robbed of watching her grandchildren grow up. I know which I'd prefer. Being old is a privilege, the lucky make it to old age, the unlucky die young or in middle age. The very lucky live till 95 and go in their sleep after a night at the pub, but that's a minority.

But in terms of the original op, I agree we have to die of something, it is the only thing that is certain that we all die. I want to live longer than mum though.

SukeyTakeItOffAgain · 24/11/2016 22:45

Lorelei, HCPs sometimes call it "old man's friend". It's not necessarily the case that they die fighting for breath, but rather just fade away.

Just found this on NetDoctor - Pneumonia is called the old man's friend because, left untreated, the sufferer often lapses into a state of reduced consciousness, slipping peacefully away in their sleep, giving a dignified end to a period of often considerable suffering.