Two people alerted me to this website created by a woman just before she took her own life in the early stages of dementia, at age 85.
Here is what I wrote in response to the second person:
Thank you for sending me that link. I love getting links from good friends so please send freely. Actually Z had sent me that one a few days ago. I really loved it because I want to do what that woman, Gillian, did, if I am in her situation. The more such accounts I read, the more I think I could have the fortitude to follow through. I am in full agreement with Gillian, except for when she says that she was becoming a vegetable or an empty shell. Those are inaccurate metaphors that dehumanize people with dementia. But she is correct in saying that she was losing her self and her ability to determine her own destiny. Until such day that society finds a way to care for people with dementia humanely and affordably, it is better to commit suicide at the stage Gillian was at. The care my mother receives is almost the best available, but it is still inhumane.
To me the hardest part about such a suicide is that, without expert supervision, it could fail, and then one is in a really bad fix. It is also hard to obtain the drugs. I don't currently know anyone who would get them for me, but perhaps if I got myself into the right circles I would be able to get them.
I just read a review of how physician aid-in-dying has been going in Oregon. I was surprised to read that of the several hundred cases of people utilizing aid-in-dying (by taking prescribed barbituates to end their own lives), several did not result in death, but in the person living on to later die of their illness. That's how uncertain death by barbituates is -- even when one has a terminal illness and is taking a prescribed amount, it can fail.
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