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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

My mom died from lung cancer. It was going to happen, life long smoker.

Dying from LC is a terrible way to go. Your lungs fill with fluid and you slowly drown in your own fluid. The pain meds make you hallucinate terrible thoughts. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

For the benefit of humanity, I hope this treatment works.

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Same with my dad in the 80s. His descent was horrible to witness, in my case at the age of 21. I’ll never know the truth, but I think his doctor took pity on him, dad died very shortly after a push of morphine.

Thanks for sharing and sorry to hear that.

My mom was only 56 (2004) and I got a call from the hospice very early in the morning.

At her request, I had tried to take care of her myself for the couple weeks after her diagnosis, but once the hallucinations started, due to her increasing the pain meds, she started screaming one night and the neighbors called the police thinking I was abusing her.

Thankfully, they called a case worker and I was able to get her into hospice pretty shortly after that and then it was just a couple days more at that point.

It was pretty traumatic. One of those life events you never forget. RIP mom.

My family tried home care in the terminal stage, but it was too much for my mom and sister. My mom also had some serious mental illnesses, compounding the difficulty we had as a family. The trauma was so great I did not really hit a normal state of emotional and mental stability until I was about 30.

I was the only one there as he took his last breath, and it still brings tears when I think about it.

Have you gotten therapy for that trauma?

I have. One thing one of the therapists told me was that it is ok to be angry at her for the abuse I took from her growing up, due to her mental illnesses. That worked wonders. Once you get past anger, it is pretty much all downhill from there.

I'll never understand how in this day and age we still allow people to die suffering this way.

How come we are ok with euthanasia for pets but not people?

It is allowed in some places. The problem is it's a terrible slippery slope which has been used to get rid of people whose lives were considered to not be worth living.

"We" don't. Here in NL euthanasia is freely available if needed.

> How come we are ok with euthanasia for pets but not people?

I think because:

- It mostly wasn't an issue we had to deal with until recently because we didn't have the medical techniques to preserve people's lives so long anyway.

- There are some concerns around people being forced into it that require any laws enabling it to be carefully designed.

- Religion providing it's usual function of inertia around societal customs slowing the change.

Pretty much everyone I know under the age of 60 (and many older) support euthanasia for people who have dementia or some other unpleasant condition that affects their quality of life (self-determined, not forced on people), so I'm quietly confident that it will be happen soon.

I'll be pretty mad if it's not available for me if/when I get to the point that I want it!

Because pets are property. There is no concept of consent. Human consent to die vs. pathological suicidal ideation is a very tricky thing.

It doesn't need to be legal to do it. People commit suicide all the time. The government doesn't need to be involved in each and every section of our lives, from cradle to grave.

Those attempts sometimes fail, and then people might be in an even worse condition than they were before. Maybe quadriplegic and/or in a psych ward.

The government is involved in every section of our lives. Births are registered, deaths are tracked, and mysterious deaths are investigated. But in this case, the government is asked to exactly not be involved; just giving licensed professionals* the permission to perform euthanasia under certain conditions.

*: not necessarily doctors if they want to stick to a strict interpretation of the Hippocratic oath

Watching my grandfather die with emphysema at age 12 was the only anti-smoking message I ever needed

Weirdly, my father who has smoked (and drank) daily his entire life (now 78), is still alive and kicking. Camel unfiltered and a lot of vodka.

I never smoked and I was never a big drinker. But, I stopped drinking entirely a couple years ago cause it was just too painful to look at him with his current health issues, and think to myself that I'm going to end up like he is. No thanks, I don't need that poison.

About 20% of smokers escape that way. Enough for everyone to know one, but the odds are still not in your favor.

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