Reply #5: It's about choice.

[RaleighNCDUer]

If someone wishes to live with such severe disabilities, that wish should be supported.

If someone wished to not be a burden, physical or financial, on their families, that wish should be supported.

My father died of Alzheimer's, after a mercifully quick decline of only six years.

If I am ever so diagnosed, I will blow my brains out.

My choice is to never be such a burden on my survivors. I am not, as it may sound, bitching about Dad being a burden. I lived too far away for his illness to impact me as a burden -- my mother did most the heavy lifting on that one. My decision was made years before, when I was looking at a possibility of spending the rest of my life in a wheel chair. I had to look at it and decide, could I live that way? Yes, I decided. But it made me think. What if I was blinded? Yes. What if instead of just my legs, it was my arms and legs? More difficult, but yes.

But if I were to lose my mind, lose myself? No, that's the limit. If I'm ever reduced to such a state I will have no artificial means used -- no feeding tube, no respirator. No heroic efforts when I begin to fade.

Today my back is improved, and I am relatively active and healthy, despite chronic pain. And I have come to the conclusions that will guide my health decisions for the future.

It is the choice I make about the quality of my own life. Everyone should have the right to make the same choice.

That is where we find the common ground -- in individual choices.