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Comment by thunfischtoast | Hacker News Reader

I feel you, I also unfortunately have experiences with that. It has profoundly changed my view on living, especially how I want to be treated when someday I'm heavily sick.

A family member in a coma takes a heavy toll on you, emotionally and financially. They are simultaneously there and not there. If they did not write down how they want to be treated you can never make a decision where you are sure what's right, or if they even want to be kept alive while not living. Eventually, when all your savings are burned through, when you might need to sell your house, you really wonder if that's what they wanted and if all that was worth it.

For me, the decision is clear: when I'm not able to make my own decisions turn everything off and let me die.

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> Eventually, when all your savings are burned through, when you might need to sell your house, you really wonder if that's what they wanted and if all that was worth it.

I will never accept a country where things like this happen routinely as civilised.

> For me, the decision is clear: when I'm not able to make my own decisions turn everything off and let me die.

And what if you might be able to make decisions again tomorrow. Or the day after? Or in two weeks time.. ? These things are never all that 'clear'.

After a couple of months of coma they are pretty clear.

The underlying idea here seems to be that if there's some chance of full recovery, one should not wish to be let go.

Is it better for 100 families to live for years with a vegetative loved one with the most realistic hope being that a few to emerge profoundly affected and never their full selves again, or is it better for those hundred families to get to grieve?

The pain of a loved one's continued quasi-existence, plus the difficulty of their life if they ever are to recover, make it so that the compassionate personal choice is to say "once the best estimated probability of my recovering robustly is clearly below P%, let me go". The value of P is a decision to be made carefully, and with deep consideration for ourselves, our loved ones, and for all of humanity.

That's exactly why you write your own decision down, so other people don't have to live with making them for you.

In my written will I have defined a clear timeframe. If I have not recovered by a measurable amount (GCS) in a timeframe of 4 weeks, it's time for me to go.

Edit: note this might be different for you. You are the only one who can make that call. You can also decide that you want to be kept alive as long as possible. But then at least your loved ones know that that's what you wanted.

Each person should be able to make their own decisions. You seem to wish to be preserved on the off chance of improvement. GP (and I) would prefer to be let go.

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