[Porsche-O-Phile]

That's the part that sucks. I am seriously considering a "do not treat / DNR" just so I don't have to go through that kind of hell. If it's my time then I just want it to be my time and be done with it. It's horrible seeing what we put people through in their so-called "golden years". My dad is having a helluva time right now and it's difficult to watch (but I'm powerless to do anything about it not having a proxy...)

It's mind-boggling to me that our supposedly enlightened society hasn't openly accepted euthanasia and assisted suicide yet as options for those at the end of life (although it's going that way finally - albeit extremely slowly). It galls me to think that a person who's miserable, suffering and has no quality of life can be made to languish for years simply because the insurance industry refuses to let assisted suicide laws become reality (it'll screw up their precious actuarial tables - they're the staunchest opponents of assisted suicide and euthanasia laws along with religious zealots).

About two years ago a coworker of mine was about a month from retirement - he had it all planned out and was predictably giddy - totally stoked looking forward to it. Then one day he just wasn't there anymore - just disappeared - gone. It turns out he'd thrown himself in front of a commuter train and offed himself. Apparently he'd gone to the doc the week before and they found out he had cancer - not fully metastasized but bad enough where he was looking at a real helluva fight with not-so-great odds. Poof! There had gone the retirement dreams that has been his motivation for the last several years and which he'd been so looking forward to with joy and elation. Up in smoke - just like that. They'd been replaced with visions of lying in bed with tubes sticking out of him and wasting away to nothing. The prospect of living all of his post-work years (that he'd been counting down the months, weeks and days to for quite a while!) in and out of surgery, chemo, living with feeding tubes and all the rest sticking out of him basically waiting to die was apparently just too much to handle. I can't say I really blame him. The real kick in the gut was hearing how his wife and kids got completely dicked by his life insurance company - since it was classified as a death by suicide they completely denied any payment and essentially told them "too bad, so sad". Horrible. Last I heard they had to sell their house to cover the estate and funeral / burial costs. Things like that are understandably upsetting to hear about and don't do anything to make me think our system doesn't completely suck and is completely misguided, but I'll stop there.

We treat our pets better than we treat our own brothers and sisters, thanks largely due to greed and silly religious dogma. I really hope by the time I hit my "golden years" that assisted suicide (without having to worry about next-of-kin getting screwed!) is an option. I certainly don't want to end up that way and to be honest I can't completely blame "Mike" (name changed) from doing what he did. It's just awful that his family got so hurt by it.