Chapter 8 #2
You will not be a cancer warrior, still you, just very ill and, at the end, very medicated.
No, your fate is potato. A scared and lonely potato.
Maybe an asshole of a potato. You’ve watched all the documentaries by now.
You see the spouses and children acknowledging that the person they once knew is already gone and a stranger remains.
A duty. A burden. If they put you in a facility, can you blame them?
By the way, you will hate that facility.
Every day, you’ll ask when you can go home.
The answer is never. Anyone who loves you will have to watch as you become more and more potato.
They might stop visiting. Your potato-ness is hard on them.
No one wants that. Every single person who’s ever thought about the end of their life (in other words, everyone) has prayed they wouldn’t end up like this.
You have to make a plan. You have to. You cannot end up a drooling, vacant potato person. You will not. You will take control and be the master of your . . . the master of . . . what’s the damn phrase again?
The master of your fate. The captain of your soul.
Yes. That. No potatoes here.
You look up medical assistance in dying, which sounds lovely compared to losing yourself in pieces.
There are a few states that allow it, including yours.
Phew! Oh. Hang on. You may not meet the criteria.
You have to be six months away from death or less and mentally competent enough to make the decision and administer the meds.
Your brain will be potato soup by then. No, medical assistance in dying is for the noble cancer patients.
The folks with ALS. People with progressive organ failure (except the brain, which doesn’t count as an organ, in this case).
And so the law condemns you to life.
Or you’ll have to take matters into your own hands.
Wouldn’t everyone do this? Wouldn’t everyone opt out of becoming a potato person?
You’re going to die anyway . . . why not go out while you’re still you?
Because you won’t be you at the end. You won’t remember how to speak, walk, read, understand.
There will be around-the-clock care. Diapers.
Fear. And this stage could last from one to three years.
You decide you’ll skip that part. Alice of Still Alice missed her window. You will not.
You go on the internet and research painless ways to die and get pop-ups from the suicide-prevention hotline. Help is available, it says. You want help, all right, but not in staying alive.
Freezing to death? You could just take a walk, lie down in the snow and stare at the sky.
Sounds kind of nice, really. Except what if you forget what you’re doing and just get up and walk inside?
Voluntary stopping of eating and drinking.
VSED. Okay, but that takes days, maybe weeks.
You know yourself. If someone nearby was eating pasta, you’d be on that plate so fast . . .
Another option is to suck on helium until you just fall asleep and never wake up. But where do you get helium? Is that the same kind of helium used for balloons? Can you rent it from the party store? Would it actually work, or would you just have a squeaky voice for a while?
What you’d like is to be Canadian. In Canada, if you’re circling the drain (they put it in nicer terms, but semantics), you can check into the hospital and someone slips in an IV, and off you go, peacefully and quickly, loved ones at your side.
Despite their love of poutine, Canadians do not condemn their citizens to becoming a potato person.
But you are not Canadian. You’re American, and only animals get put out of their suffering in this country.
You could easily buy a gun (again, you’re American) and shoot yourself in your rotting brain. It would be a sort of justice—You betrayed me, Brain, so say hello to my little friend! But you think of how they’d find you, the horrific image that would be burned on their souls.
But there’s another perk of being American . . . is there a country where it’s easier to get prescription drugs? There is not. Trouble sleeping? Here’s some Ambien. Hurt your back? We got your Vicodin right here. Anxious? No problem, here’s your Xanax.
You’re a white female without a history of substance abuse, so getting top-shelf drugs is a piece of cake. Not all at once, of course. Just because your brain is evaporating doesn’t mean you’re stupid. You still have eleven Vicodin tablets from a wrenched back four years ago. That’s a start.
You go to your general practitioner, the one who took so fucking long to send you to the neurologist, and tell her you can’t fall asleep.
You toss and turn for hours (not exactly a lie).
She tells you it’s not uncommon for people with dementia (which you already know).
Maybe ten immediate-release Ambien, 5 mg apiece, and then she’ll reevaluate?
You do reevaluate and tell her the 5 mg just isn’t working (not that you would know .
. . you haven’t swallowed a single pill).
She bumps you up to 10 mg and gives you ten more pills, warning you that it could make you feel foggier.
You contact her two weeks later, say it’s working beautifully and you actually feel clearer with a good night’s sleep.
She renews your prescription for thirty pills.
Mission accomplished, but just in case . . .