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Comment by sampleinajar | Hacker News Reader

For some, I imagine death is preferable to dementia.

To be frank dementia is death but fuzzier and more drawn out. I know fron experience with Alzheimer'd in family - it is a loss of self such that by the end they were effectively dead for years - just confused remnants of personality and inability to interact meaningfully - it is horrifying. At least when someone in your family gets hit by a truck you know when you lost them.

Yeah. I don't think people who haven't experienced it know how bad it is. My grandmother had dementia and by the end she didn't know who my mother (her daughter) was.

I just can't think of a worse fate not just for the suffer, but for those that love them. It is a constant painful and sad reminder for loved ones to interact with them.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

You can't imagine how much joy it gives you when your father suddenly screams out your name when you visit him after years of not calling your name. He had Alzheimer's too

I've seen dementia run its course a few times now, and I'll take any other kind of death.

It certainly would be for me, depending on the extent, but you can check out once you get a diagnosis. But you might not even get to that diagnosis if cancer or heart disease kills you before that (as the statistics overwhelmingly suggest it will), so you'll always have a net loss of "non-dementia years of life" without fixing those.

Unless you're thinking: you're willing to accept that whether or not you'll ever get dementia in the first place because cowardice or social pressure would prevent you from checking out once you do get the diagnosis. But that's sad and pretty unfair to yourself and others.

So when do you check out? Dementia can insidiously can take years to develop, and by the time you're far enough along to need it to end you're already potentially too far along to know it. Losing your mental faculties is losing the ability to make objective decisions like that.

That part makes me less scared of dementia. The fact that I'll not even realize I have it, and will just feel confused about who people are and where I am... Kind of like when I was a little child.

Vouching for this comment. Not sure why this comment was killed, but it's just as valid opinion as being scared of getting dementia. At the end of the day, people don't return from dementia (yet) so we don't really know if it's a bad way to go or a good way to go purely from the perspective of the afflicted. It's certainly painful for the loved ones of those afflicted with it, but for the person experiencing it, it could be similar to how a small child experiences the world or a drug induced stupor that many people voluntarily subject themselves to recreationally.

It's not me that I worry about - it's the people I love.

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