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Comment by cjaybo | Hacker News Reader

This seems like an awfully self-centered way of viewing the situation.

How so? I was respectful of her decision -- although I suspect it was more her husband's decision -- but I wouldn't have made the same myself. It seemed like there was a lot she had to say, but couldn't in that state due to the drug. I suppose she thought she was making sense, but objectively wasn't.

Maybe cancer was giving her bigger challenges to deal with than making sense to you which lead to extreme measures like high drug doses (chemotherapy, marijuana, opioids).

To me it sounds like complaining that your friend with cancer is objectively a worse friend because he doesn't feel like playing Mario with you anymore after taking his cancer drugs or painkillers. He thought he was a good friend, but he objectively wasn't >:(.

Maybe there's reasoning behind the trade-offs they chose that involves more than you?

As I said, I respected her decision. But I question whether it was the right one because it left her unable to communicate despite an obvious desire to do so. I’ve had conversations with people on high doses of opiates, and while they were far from their full mental capacity, they were intelligible. My dad tried to convince her husband to use conventional painkillers, which I supported, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

You say you respect her decision, but then in the same breadth go on to say you think it wasn't her decision at all. You've written much in this thread to strangers on the internet about how you believe it was a wrong decision. You have a peculiar way of respecting others' opinions.

By respect I meant that I didn’t attempt argue with her husband about it, or say anything to her, which would have been pointless anyway.

But did behind her back?

respect is orthogonal to agreement. why would it even be necessary to say you respect someone's decision if you agree without reservation?

Respect seems incompatible with airing your criticisms to strangers on the internet. That, to me, is not respectful.

My aunt passed away a few years ago now. Her husband will never read this. The rest of the family agrees with me as far as I know. I don't see who I'm disrespecting by publicly and semi-anonymously questioning those decisions in retrospect.

Victimless disrespect is still disrespect.

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