I can’t find the documentary name, but this article reminds me of it. Basically, a man had chronic pain and spent a decade or more trying to solve it. It got to a point where he realized that even though he had treatments, he was still in a lot of pain and felt like he was just eking out his life just to be miserable every day. At one point, he mentions his grandmother dying of cancer. She’s taking a regimen of pills to stay alive but she’s miserable. She doesn’t have a quality of life, so he eventually asks her why she keeps taking her pills then because they’re basically artificially keeping her alive.

By the end of the film, he says goodbye to his loved ones and has an assisted suicide to escape the pain he was in. It was a really touching documentary. As a society, we have a big focus on “fighting” cancer or other big illnesses. I guess there is a quiet, difficult dignity in deciding to face your mortality too, but it’s rarely talked about.