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Comment by gopher_space | Hacker News Reader

It’s painfully easy to start thinking in numbers when you’re paying six thousand a month to warehouse your grandmother’s body.

The number of tests people want to run on someone we all hope dies tomorrow is insane.

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Funny, I pay even more than you mention to support my own mother in relative comfort in a nursing home, and I don't find it "painfully easy" to think that way at all. I certainly don't hope she dies tomorrow. You might want to reconsider saying such things in public.

Note: my mother, not my grandmother, and I have lived that ordeal for several years. Some interaction is still possible, but recognition has been beyond her for a while. As long as she seems to take some pleasure in her surroundings, no matter how dim or muted the signs, you won't catch me framing my thoughts about her in terms of dollars I could save.

I think a more generous reading of the comment you are replying to could be (and probably is reasonable): It is hard to pay a lot of money for somebody that is living in agony with no chance of getting better, where death might be a good option for them personally. I would not understand the comment to criticize supporting people living in relative comfort.

"Warehousing her body" suggests otherwise. When people talk about someone as a "body" they usually mean insensate IMX. People whose loved ones are in pain tend to use different, even more colorful, language. I know I did, when that was the case.

> People whose loved ones are in pain tend to use different, even more colorful, language.

The human experience varies wildly and I would not make such assumptions. Caring for somebody without the hope of improvement for years can make you bitter or even resent the person that no longer resembles the one you loved.

> make you bitter or even resent the person

And that's OK? I happen to think it's not, that bitterness and resentment hurt everyone involved, and I know that it's possible to resist those feelings. How, exactly, does the person who succumbs get to play Good Guy?

No one’s said that it makes them Good Guy. Only Human.

Sounds like your grandmother can still recognize and interact with people. Mine was basically a warm body for the last five years of her life.

Prolonging that existence is not a kindness in any sense, and I hope you don’t have to go through such an ordeal.

Before you jump the gun like that again: The context is most likely about the suffering of the patient in question from simply existing in that state, and there being no way to alleviate the suffering (only prolonging the life). Not about saving money.

So it’s a lose-lose: the patient suffers and society has to pay for their privilege to suffer (without recourse, most likely).

And maybe you disagree fundamentally with things like assisted suicide. But someone who posts something like what you replied to most likely do not.

Before you jump the gun again...

> Not about saving money

Then why even bring it up, let alone cite it as something that change[ds] one's views?

> maybe you disagree fundamentally with things like assisted suicide

In fact I do not. There was a time when my mother wanted to end it, and I wasn't the one who stopped her. I respected her right to make her own choice. Her condition subsequently improved to the point where she no longer wished that, leading to the current status quo, but that's already far more than any of the pissants in this thread deserved to hear about it. Expressing one's own wish for a supposedly-loved one to die is indefensible, even if they also wish it for themselves.

I think the part you’re missing is that the loved one died years ago but the body is being kept alive. There’s no personality left. Everything’s gone.

Alzheimer’s and dementia are incredibly cruel experiences for everyone involved. There’s no reason to prolong the situation.

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