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Comment by anm89 | Hacker News Reader

I watched my Grandfather die in a way which was truly horrific from terminal cancer.

We have some family members who cared a lot about him and have very deep pockets, so they assembled a team of the best specialists they could find over a variety of disciplines and demanded they throw every treatment possible at him to try to keep him alive. So in his late 80's, with terminal cancer, they have him on chemo, pumped full of an ever changing diet of pills, going through one invasive procedure after another. He was a smart guy too and I think he hated it but didn't have the heart to tell his family who thought they were doing the right thing to stop.

All for what? To keep him barely alive hooked up to machines for an extra month or two? It was one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed that that is what the end of his life had to look like.

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When my grandfather got to the end I remember the doctors and parents and aunt and uncle talking all about "quality of life." Looking back its clear that was their ultimate measure and how they decided to do what they did (and mostly didn't do).

Sorry, not to downplay what you've said. That sounds pretty terrible. It got me thinking about these things.

My spouse and I talked about this.

Quality of life means still willing to be here, able to get more out of it all than it takes from us.

We both have agreed the other will do the right thing however painful it may be to who ever gets stuck with it first.

We do not know what our survivor does. We fear that.

Unfortunately such a common phenomenon that it has a name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daughter_from_California_syn...

This is very fascinating. In our case the out of town family was very close with their dad but in all the other ways it matches up.

> So in his late 80's, with terminal cancer, they have him on chemo, pumped full of an ever changing diet of pills, going through one invasive procedure after another.

My family came to a different result for somebody the same age.

We looked at it from the standpoint of, "With blood cancer in their 80s, is there an endgame that resulted in getting better?"

If you think about it for a minute, you don't get better in your 80s in a meaningful way, since you aren't going to live forever.

So we asked them what their wishes were, and did not continue treatment. Everybody reached an agreement that wasn't all about the emotions of people who weren't ill.

I think it depends on the severity and person. My grandpa got cancer when he was 90. He beat it and lived another 2 years. He lived at home and didn't have to stay at the hospital.

>you don't get better in your 80s in a meaningful way, since you aren't going to live forever.

A year or three is a long time at that age. Think about the milestones the grandchildren or great grand children of someone in their 80s are going through. They want to be alive to see that.

> So we asked them what their wishes were

I thinked you missed that point.

> They want to be alive to see that.

No, nobody in my family wants to undergo chemo or surgery at an advanced age to see grandkids.

...but probably not at any cost. I’d ask them rather than assert it.

One more year, stuck into pointless hospital care wouldn't necessarily mean they get to really see (least enjoy) their grandchildren milestones, one thing is for sure: a lot of physical suffering

> you don't get better in your 80s in a meaningful way, since you aren't going to live forever.

No one live forever. My father had bowel cancer in his mid-eighties 4 years ago. He had an operation to remove the tumour and had a very unpleasant month or so recuperating but needed no other treatment. He appears happy and could potentially live another 10 years.

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