Question
6: How do you want to be treated
if
you get Alzheimer's disease
or
some other condition that limits your mental abilities?
The normal practice in American medicine
is
to assume that people want to live as long as physically possible,
even
if the quality of that life sinks to a low level.
Alzheimer's
disease is one of the most common examples of this.
People
who lose their ability to take care of themselves
because
of this degenerative brain disease
(or
other brain conditions that cause similar losses)
are
routinely placed in nursing homes,
where
all of their bodily needs are taken care of by the employees.
As
a culture we have believed that such treatment was proper respect
for
the persons these individuals used to be.
It
was almost unthinkable that we would take active measures
to
end the lives of these former persons,
even
if we were certain that meaningful life was over.
But if we had written statements from such patients,
explaining
why they do not want to be kept alive as former persons,
this
would relieve the decisions-makers of the terrible burden
of
having to decide just when to end the life of another human being.
So if you would
prefer to be dead,
rather
than to live out the last years of your life in senility,
you
should state your wishes at this point in your Advance Directive.
QUESTION
6:
ALZHEIMER’S
DISEASE
by JAMES
PARK
97
The law might not yet permit merciful death for senile former persons,
but
written permission from you while you are still obviously a person
—before
your mind deteriorated into Alzheimer's disease, for instance—
would
be a powerful support for a rational decision
to
end your life when it no longer seems to have any meaning
either
for you or for anyone else who once cared about you.
The selection above is the beginning of Question 6 from the book:
Your
Last
Year: Creating Your Own Advance Directive for Medical Care.
If you click
this title, you will see
the complete table of contents.
This Question is 6 pages long.
If you are in danger of getting Alzheimer's disease,
you will want to read this whole section.
If you
would like to see one person's Answer to this Question,
go to James
Park's Advance Directive for Medical Care.
Scroll down to Answer 6.
Answer 6 from James Park's Advance Directive for
Medical Care
is also available in the 5th
edition, 2006.
Go to
the beginning of this website
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library