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Comment by troupo | Hacker News Reader

Death from hunger (esp. when you're frightened and don't understand what's happening) is neither comfortable nor comforting

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Fascinating that you think someone with dementia would be suffering more from hunger then from their condition sapping away at them.

Neither you nor I know what the person with dementia is suffering from.

What you call "comforting" is leaving a helpless prison in the wilderness to succumb to thirst, hunger or predators

Thirst and hunger. They’re meant to die a peaceful death so pretty sure no predators involved.

Go to a dementia facility and hang out with your those people. You will see suffering.

My grandmother died of dementia.

If you think that "cannot feed themselves" is when a person is already completely gone and it's okay to "leave them under a tree to die of hunger and thirst", I've got news for you.

My mother has dementia, so maybe dementia just has different expressions and you shouldn’t generalise ?

If I was starving to death, the acute sensation of hunger would override everything else in my mind.

Unfortunately someone with advanced dementia does not know if she has eaten or not. Most of the time there will be no eating, unless someone else puts food in your mouth.

That wasn't the case with my father, who had a pretty good appetite up until his last few weeks.

I'm sorry for your first-hand experience, but I also need to remind you that 1 first-hand experience does not translate well to the overall population of people experiencing dementia.

That’s literally what it says in the story though. That it would only happen if the person won’t eat by themselves.

Why would they need to know whether they have eaten, or even what eating is? They would feel the sensation of gnawing hunger in their stomach, the same way a baby or animal does.

You ever hung out with someone in deep dementia ?

But seriously, how do you know that?

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