Yes. True.
But...
it's like...
Well, take my maternal grandmother. Her mother didn't marry until she'd graduated college and was in the workforce a few years. And the man she fell in love with was dying of colon cancer. And back then (they met in 1910 or 1911 or 1912, somewhere in there), that was 100% a death sentence, there was 0 treatments that had a hope of a cure.
But she married him anyway, even though he was in pain and the doctors were only giving him a year or two to live.
And four years later they had my great-uncle. And then another two years after that they had my great-aunt. And another seven years after that, they had my grandmother.

My grandmother literally does not remember a time when her father was healthy. From a decade before she was born, he was bedridden, in pain, and dying of cancer.
They kept taking him in for more surgeries, since taking out more of his gut was about the only thing they knew to do.

He didn't die until she was 13 years old.

And he was in pain that entire time.

But he married and got a family during that extra time he stayed alive. My grandmother wouldn't be here otherwise. And if she wouldn't have been born, then neither would my mother, and neither would I.

So....

While I can intellectually go, "yes, that's a lot of pain, how wearying and soul-destroying, do what's best for you", at the same time I emotionally can't help but think, "Cling to life as long as you can".

It's this weird back-and-forth. Any given moment, any given mood, and my answer changes....


Philosophy. What can you do?

I'm sure he suffered a lot of pain indeed.
But if he did have three children, well, maybe it was not so constant.
I mean, he would not feel like having much sex if he was always in such a pain, don't you think?

I think it's easier to understand euthanasia in terms of - I don't know how to put it - terminal stuff.

My aunt died of cancer too, it was the 90s so at least she had some treatments (for about 10 or 15 years) but had pain quite often.
Still only the last few days were agony. We are talking days here. Problem is that at that point if her life had been a day longer it would have been a day of agony longer.
Going back to her "normal pain" would be worth it, but at that point she could not.

My mother-in-law has cancer too, at this point they've removed half of her insides (started in her color, spread up to her lungs) but her life is - generally - quite decent.

My uncle died of AIDS in early 90s, when there treatments were not very good - he decided to stay untreated and let himself die.
Was it the wise choice?
I don't know.
But it was his choice.

Yeah. It's such a personal choice, trying to draw any line that applies in general is a mistake; every person and every situation is different.

My mom sometimes talks about how in her generation, hemophilia became almost an extinct disease not because they cured it but because everyone she knew who had it ended up dying of AIDS since they didn't catch the blood transfusion issue early enough for them. Dark humor. Honestly I'm pretty impressed how far we've gotten, treating some of these diseases that used to have no options. Every time I start to get pessimistic, I can look back at history and remind myself, wait, we're actually getting a little better, bit by bit.

Medicine has worked wonders.
So many illness that used to kill people by the thousands now appear to be quite rare.

That's one reason why it fascinates me that some people can be against vaccination.

In a weird way, I view the existence of anti-vaxxers as a sign of success.
If we were still living in a pre-vaccination world, no one would ever be against them because it would be so VERY VERY clearly evident that it would be worth doing. Back when everyone you knew had lost children or even adult relatives to whooping cough or measles or typhoid fever or smallpox or polio or worst of all lockjaw.
But those are so rare now that people are able to actually delude themselves. Their faces aren't constantly rubbed in the horror of unchecked preventable diseases and illnesses.
So in a weird way, it's bizarrely encouraging.

My mind might be a strange place.
I admit it.

I guess that's a way to see it, yes.
I don't find it encouraging, but it's kinda reasonable indeed.

Anyway I bothers me that we have so much people in a personal crusade against science nowadays.
"My opinion is as a valid as anyone's else" kind of arguments are amusing.

I completely agree Moi.
I don't think turning off life support is ever easy for anyone.
Sometimes it's the best thing you can do, but I don't think it makes it any easier.



Yeah, there were plenty of medical practices that were completely wrong.
Judging old times with nowadays standards always brings a quite strange image of the past.
I'm sure people in the future will think many of the "normal" things we do now are plain ridiculous/stupid/wrong.

Ha ha ha, yeah, there's a huge difference between opinion and fact. I privilege my own opinion all the time (hey, it's my opinion, if I disagreed with my own opinion I'd just change it), but try really hard to make sure I never ever confuse my own opinions with actual facts -which is why my politics tend to not match up with my opinions all the time.

Just because I selfishly don't want to see my relatives die before they absolutely have to, doesn't mean I ever ever ever want to see their right to die when they want to taken away, so I'll support and campaign for their ability to die whenever they want.... even if I want them to stick around.

And just because I get mad at people for "dying early" doesn't mean I will *ever* express that at a funeral where someone who might be dealing with their own grief could hear and be upset by it. It's just the darkness inside my own head, and that's where it'll stay, safely out of my family conversations. Sure, sure, in the middle of the night I'll hold conversations with dead relatives, but.... that's private between me and any theoretical ghost. It's just kind of part of the way I grieve, getting selfishly mad at them for leaving me.

It can be the right thing for them to do and the wrong thing for me to do at the same time. It can be the right thing for them to do and the thing that will make me mad, at the same time. They aren't mutually exclusive. I just have to make sure my mad doesn't impact them. Part of which is me acknowledging my mad so that it doesn't leak through because I wasn't paying attention to it.

I don't know. I might just be expressing myself poorly.