At a birthday lunch on Thursday for a co-worker who is going sky-diving today, we got onto the topic of assisted suicide -- some of them declaring in a macho way that if they were unable to take care of themselves and someone had to help them use the bathroom, they'd want that to be it. This was a table full of temporarily abled people (not that that term is used by my co-workers). I did not talk with them about my family's experience with my mother who died of emphysema (and was unable to care for herself at various points) -- too personal, and I haven't resolved my own feelings about some of it -- but I did say I know a doctor who knows people who thought they would want to die if they became disabled, but then became disabled and didn't want to die, after all, and that actually the will to live can be pretty strong even then. I didn't go on about ableism and societal pressures to suicide, but I am thinking about this if the topic comes back up.
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Date: 2010-06-26 12:28 pm (UTC)At a birthday lunch on Thursday for a co-worker who is going sky-diving today, we got onto the topic of assisted suicide -- some of them declaring in a macho way that if they were unable to take care of themselves and someone had to help them use the bathroom, they'd want that to be it. This was a table full of temporarily abled people (not that that term is used by my co-workers). I did not talk with them about my family's experience with my mother who died of emphysema (and was unable to care for herself at various points) -- too personal, and I haven't resolved my own feelings about some of it -- but I did say I know a doctor who knows people who thought they would want to die if they became disabled, but then became disabled and didn't want to die, after all, and that actually the will to live can be pretty strong even then. I didn't go on about ableism and societal pressures to suicide, but I am thinking about this if the topic comes back up.