what's the most hideously painful/mortifying way to experience the rest of one's life?

[Gabi Hayes]

any medical/scientific knowledge in the area would be of particular interest

just curious

[Luminous Animal]

1. Living it as a ditto head.

[Salmonslayer]

2. Not medical or Scientific but...

It would be spending the rest of my life after the death of my three children. I can think of no worse pain.

[lpbk2713]

3. Knowing that you voted for George Dumbya Boosh.

Oh the ignominy.

[MadBadger]

4. Being trapped, unable to move in Rambaldi's Tomb forever and ever and ever.

sucks to be him

[dysfunctional press]

5. being imprisoned for life, for a crime you didn't commit.

[WCGreen]

6. With a hateful heart...

I can think of nothing worse than being so defeated by life that you can't enjoy the wonderful gift of life, where ever and how ever it came to be...

[Violet_Crumble]

7. Being chained together with someone who won't stop talking about how much they love Avatar n/t

[Hannah Bell]

8. Listening to the saints at DU smite you with karma for toasting Rush's ill-being.

[LibDemAlways]

9. Having helplessly watched a loved one deteriorate mentally, I would say that

being afflicted with dementia is a pretty horrific way to live.

[Greyhound]

10. I have to go with either being burned alive or eaten. n/t

[Warpy]

11. How about watching everything you worked for come to nothing

with your ideas discredited and your former supporters embarrassed at the mention of your name, being such a pariah that you're pretty much a hermit?

That would do it. Mental anguish beats physical anguish any old day.

[Violet_Crumble]

12. That's making the assumption they're intelligent enough to realise they're a pariah...

For mental anguish to work there has to be some self-awareness and when it comes to some conservative types, I don't think they've got the level of self-awareness needed to realise they've epically failed...

[tblue]

16. Kinda like Joe Lieberman? nt

[Occulus]

13. "Locked-in syndrome"

It's where you're completely conscious but totally paralyzed, and the only things that work are the automatic functions (breathing, heartbeat, hearing, digestion, etc). Other than that, you can't move even your head.

From the wiki:

Locked-in syndrome is a condition in which a patient is aware and awake, but cannot move or communicate due to complete paralysis of nearly all voluntary muscles in the body except for the eyes. Total locked-in syndrome is a version of locked-in syndrome where the eyes are paralyzed as well. It is the result of a brain stem lesion in which the ventral part of the pons is damaged. The condition has been described as "the closest thing to being buried alive". In French, the common term is "maladie de l'emmuré vivant", literally translated as walled-in alive disease; in German it is sometimes called "Eingeschlossensein".

Absolutely horrifying. I think I might want to be killed if it happened to me.

[Electric Monk]

14. Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)

nominated for 4 Oscars. Very touching movie, even more so if you understand it in the original French.

[tblue]

17. I should see it. What is "diving bell"??? nt

[Electric Monk]

18. A helmet to breathe in, but not SCUBA. Really old school diving, with the pump on the surface

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/

[tblue]

15. That goes double for me.

Have you ever had sleep paralysis? It's similar, though very temporary. I used to have it a lot. It is a nightmare!

[cutlassmama]

19. had that too, it's maddening