Terry Pratchett and assisted suicide

Terry Pratchett, a British fantasy author and one of my favorites, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's just days after my dad died.   He has given loads of money to research and been extremely outspoken with what is happening to him.   Now he says he wants to die in his garden, listening to his I-pod, on his own terms.
He says, "I live in hope - hope that before the disease in my brain finally wipes it clean, I can jump before I am pushed and drag my evil Nemesis to its doom, like Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty locked in combat as they go over the waterfall." 
When we put Nutter to sleep last September, I cried there at the vet's, my hand on his back, as the life went out of him.  But he was suffering and we loved him and it was the last gift we could give him.  How horrible to be denied that when it's a human you love and who is suffering.

Sir Terry says that 'right-to-die' campaigners trying to change the law on suicide are acting with 'furious sanity'. He calls for the creation of special tribunals run by coroners to establish that terminally ill patients who request assisted deaths are acting voluntarily.

Evidently they are trying to pass laws regulating assisted suicide (so it's not prosecuted as murder) and 75% of people polled agree that it's the right thing to do.
It's obvious to me, reading this long article by Sir Terry, that he still has wit and imagination plenty.

We would not walk away from a man being attacked by a monster, and if we couldn't get the ravening beast off him we might well conclude that some instant means of less painful death would be preferable before the monster ate him alive.

Screenprint of original article

166 Hemlock Society

These bouts of sadness come on me suddenly, and often for no reason. This morning I was working on one of my other blogs, and my big ragdoll kitten (9 months old, 15 lbs) was sprawled on his back, his head on my wrist, eyes half open, purring. I started thinking about how much he's going to miss me when I'm away next week, and then I thought, what if I get killed on vacation? I'll never see my cats or birds or fish again. And that made me cry.
When I drive, I have too much time to think, and my thoughts turned down that awful road: what if I get Alzheimer's? I mean, obviously I'm going to kill myself, right? I can't put my husband through that, and we have no children, I have no siblings, there'd be no one at all to help him with me. And he is not very nurturing to begin with.
And the next thought is how? I had a friend who said if she got it, she'd take a bottle of sleeping pills, go sit in her car in the garage with it turned on, and drink a glass of wine and listen to her favorite music until she fell asleep. It sounded very peaceful. But would it work? (Not that I drink wine. I'd be out there with my diet caffeine free Pepsi.)
So I thought, I'd better go look into joining the Hemlock Society. And gasp, they don't exist anymore. WTF? I am not in favor of teenage angst suicide, but if you have a terminal disease, or you're old and past your sell-by date and have no one who cares about you anymore, you should be able to check yourself out.
Evidently their duties have been taken over by a group called "Compassion and Choices" which doesn't have quite the same ring to it. And there isn't even a Connecticut chapter; they just refer you to the corporate office.
I just feel so old, and I didn't even battle AD myself. I only watched my father do it. I'm not even 40, but in the past few months my temples have gone gray and my hair has thinned from stress. My mom aged about 10 years. I just wonder physically what it's done to us. I read somewhere that Alzheimer's caregivers have drastically shortened lifespans, in accordance to how long the caregiving went on. So this disease didn't just take my father. It's stolen part of my mother's life too, and probably mine.