Venting When the elderly want to die, we let them

[willitpass2]

I work in healthcare. If 86 year old pawpaw starts saying he is ready to die, arrangements are made to send him home on hospice. There is just this arbitrary decision of when someone has lived "a life well lived" and is allowed to want to die. Yet if you're young enough by societies standards, it seems spare cancer or equally terminal conditions, there is no limit to how much suffering you must endure. I am never asked my code status when I am admitted, despite wanting to be a DNR, because it's autonomically assumed that any 20 something would want to be brought back. My body is failing. I wake up every day to my whole body aching. I take so many medications just to stay semi functional that I've had nurses think my med list was an error. I have multiple devices implanted in my body to try and replicate what my body can no longer do on its own. And prior to all of that was a decade and a half of crippling mental health issues making most of my life miserable. I'm hardly able to hold my job, I'm too exhausted on my days off to do anything. I have no quality of life.

Yet I haven't met societies standards to be deemed an "acceptable age" to die. My diagnosis aren't cancer so I must not be suffering that badly. If I were to tell any doctors at the hospital that I don't want to do this anymore, I would be given an immediate psych referral. It doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[RazzleDazzle]

Yeah, I've been dealing with a chronic health condition that has just floored me, and no one seems to really understand just how sick I am. I'm so fucking sick I can't make it to a doctor's appointment (and frankly, not that it would be particularly helpful anyway, they are pretty useless, in my experience, for what I'm dealing with.) I'm so fucking broken down I can barely keep myself alive. But wanting to die is somehow a failure

I've spent the day today trying to get enough electrolytes and caffeine into me that I can wash myself and gather my things enough to go out. All I have to do is stop by one store for five minutes and then sit in the library and I'm so sick and tired it's taken me hours to get myself to a place where I can. There's no way that I could go back to working anytime soon, I'm about to be homeless and lose everything, and I'm too sick and exhausted to do anything. And I'm alone. I'm so fucking alone. I wish I could keep on living it just doesn't seem possible any more, in every direction my life is gone.

 

[TheUncommon]

I can only appreciate the fact that whenever I finally die, I won't have to be subjected to the torture of people like this, making people suffer for a lifetime just so they can avoid feeling bad for all of a week.

The same self-righteous people who think they're doing the world a service via virtue signalling the inherent sanctity of human life are the singular reason there are communities like this full of people who are denied a peaceful way to die on their own terms, and are either driven to insanity (taking others with them or having others witness) or subjected to grisly methods of self-termination.

I feel like a captive. Being told that this place is so great, being forcefully barred from escaping, being treated like you're crazy when you aren't playing along. Being alive is a hostage situation.

 

[Playingwiththedead]

I work in healthcare. If 86 year old pawpaw starts saying he is ready to die, arrangements are made to send him home on hospice. There is just this arbitrary decision of when someone has lived "a life well lived" and is allowed to want to die. Yet if you're young enough by societies standards, it seems spare cancer or equally terminal conditions, there is no limit to how much suffering you must endure. I am never asked my code status when I am admitted, despite wanting to be a DNR, because it's autonomically assumed that any 20 something would want to be brought back. My body is failing. I wake up every day to my whole body aching. I take so many medications just to stay semi functional that I've had nurses think my med list was an error. I have multiple devices implanted in my body to try and replicate what my body can no longer do on its own. And prior to all of that was a decade and a half of crippling mental health issues making most of my life miserable. I'm hardly able to hold my job, I'm too exhausted on my days off to do anything. I have no quality of life.

Yet I haven't met societies standards to be deemed an "acceptable age" to die. My diagnosis aren't cancer so I must not be suffering that badly. If I were to tell any doctors at the hospital that I don't want to do this anymore, I would be given an immediate psych referral. It doesn't make any sense to me.

Hell is hard to escape

 

[urgent]

I wish I could have someone give me that morphine and Ativan until I'm gone.