Never work in a nursing home.
there is nothing, and I mean nothing in this world that I'm more afraid of than Alzheimer's... it's an absolutely fucking awful disease
Cancer slightly wins out because I can't get over the existential horror of it being a potentiality any time a cell is damaged or replicates, but dementia to me is a cancer of the soul. It's one of those conditions where if I'm diagnosed and physically capable I'm walking from the neurologist's office to the roof. For every patient that seemed blissfully unaware of their condition, there were five who lived in abject terror of their own dying brain. Going through that for an indeterminate amount of years is something nobody except fascists deserve.
Both of my grandmother's asked to be killed when they got Alzheimer's, and my family just kind of laughed it off. Because, I mean, how could they do anything else?
Grim stuff. I hope I can take myself out before it comes to that.
Dementia is some of the darkest shit I've seen. A perpetual horror film that changes based on the stimuli they can't explain, a hospital they can't identify or escape with staff who are trained to lie to and redirect them, no sense of coherent identity or even age so they might be a 6 year-old waiting for their dead mother to pick them up from school.
Let's hope we can prevent that in the future. Looks like we are close to a Parkinson's vaccine.
I don't know how much of a hot take this is, but this kind of shit is why every country should have some laws / system in place to allow for peaceful euthanasia. Nobody should have to just suffer like that until they die.
Totally agree. Dementia, MS, ALS, and cancer are all things I've seen the end stages of along with things like being locked in from a stroke. It's such a degrading way to go even if you could afford my $7000/mo nursing home and the right workers were on shift that day. The diseases strip them of everything until they're staring at empty walls like a cat under a porch. If they do try to kill themselves, that can be just as painful and failing will put them in the same bed in worse condition. Spending that $7000/mo wrecks the families who they leave behind and seeing their parent in that state leaves them with a warped perception of who that person was. Sometimes their grief turns psychotic and they want grandma to live even when "grandma" died a decade ago and there's just the body whose every function is micromanaged. There's no dignity in that and it's culturally normalised to benefit the for-profit industry around it. The right to die is the highest mercy medicine can give when we've reached the current limits of our abilities. It's the patient's decision alone, but withholding it is morally insane to me.
Seriously if I'm in this situation please just kill me. It's cruel to let someone suffer like that instead of dying in peace.
There was a time where even Catholic doctors would, when a person entered the final stage, just take the limiter off the morphine drip.
It had its flaws, but your personal physician/palliative care specialist should be able to be given legal power to end your suffering, should you become unable to.
The fact is most people who die dehydrate to death.
Confirm. We got it a few years back and my grandfather got to go out on his own terms surrounded by family instead of dragging the process out potentially for years with no hope of improvement. It's good and I stand it hard.
I'm helping take care of my elderly relatives, some of whom have been absolutely devastated by dementia and Alzheimer's. Every day for them is scary, confusing and frustrating. At one point my great-grandma woke up screaming because she had it in her head that she was still 12 years old (actually 91) and couldn't understand why she couldn't move her legs or why her skin looked so craggy.
I'll say it again: I 1000% unironically hope that before the U.S. crumbles and all the silicon valley billionaires take off for Elysium that they'll figure out effective anti- or reverse aging treatments. Or at least some way to reverse brain deterioration. Say what you want about death, but aging is a universal curse; a debilitating disease that needs to be cured like any other.
No one deserves to go through the kind of hell my relatives, or the person who made this drawing, are currently going through.
My condolences comrade. Caretaking for a condition like that is an impossible burden and it's equally impossible to separate the person from the disorder. It completely poisoned my relationship with my grandparents until I could accept that they died the day they were diagnosed. The systems that force it should be burned to the ground along with everyone responsible for such barbarism.
:meow-hug: Thank you, and condolences and solidarity to you too. I've accepted that the people who helped raised me are effectively already gone, but it's still hard to see them struggling and know it's only going to get worse.
You're giving them a level of rehumanisation they wouldn't have in a nursing home. That's the best anyone could ask for given the circumstances. There's absolutely no shame in taking that step for their own protection when your own abilities are exhausted but either way you're protecting them at their most vulnerable moment.
We're getting close with my great-grandma, she'll have to go into a medicaid facility sometime next year if she lives that long; we already had to sell her house back to the bank in order to pay for all her medical expenses.
Thank you for the kind words, for real. And godspeed to you too; I can't imagine doing this type of work professionally. :fidel-salute-big:
Alzheimer's is a curse like no other, you have my solidarity. I grew up with my grandmother having early onset Alzheimer's and she moved in with us in the final years when I a teen. I didn't realize how it effected me until I spent some time processing years later. She was an amazing woman who dedicated her life to advocating for Alzheimer's after her diagnosis but I only ever got glimpses of that growing up. Some of my earliest memories with her are when she would "give me the talk" that she had Alzheimer's several times a day and I couldn't say anything because I didn't want to hurt more. Best of luck to you.
I know. I had a friend die recently. They went relatively quick and with the best palliative care money can buy in a country where you don't have to pay unless you want the gold plating. It was a "good death" by modern healthcare standards.
But no matter what they say and how much drugs you have in your nice room, it's bad. The body always tries to live, and what we know about the rate of coma patients having some awareness doesn't give me comfort about what the final moments feel like.
For a less gruesome example. He was around music his whole life, but in the last week, he was so sound sensitive he couldn't handle so much as a lullaby. Fucking shattering.
Fuck death, find the grim reaper and impale him on a sickle and smash his head in with the hammer.
Working in that environment is an experience I think everyone should have and nobody should have to have. I'm not sure about the residential home side, but when it comes to nursing homes you're exposed to every terminal condition and every kind of vulnerability. The ways a thing like alcoholism ends are so horrific that I wouldn't wish them on 5% of my enemies.
The ones who go to Omelas and say "maybe you should not bury the tortured child where you can't see it?"
I studied psychology as my first degree. As part of the practical preparation we were assigned to different institutions. I had to volunteer at a place for children with severe cognitive disability. It kinda really messed me up, and was the major reason why I changed my field almost immediately after.
Here in Australia (and also in Germany, where I think it's been somewhat more effective.) there were pushes to give these people jobs and social lives. They're still very isolated though, but there's a guy with Downs Syndrome I often meet on the train. He works in a warehouse and follows the Rugby team I say I like if pressed so we just have a chill chat about that.
The Liberal government keeps cutting services though so not good.
Hey it looks like my notebooks
Unironically I draw "help" like this all the time and I dont know why
Ghosts are trying to contact you in order to solve their unresolved murders. It's the only explanation
Very smooth brain makes for clearer supernatural communication
