January 21, 2004

Tonight's Festivities

Just got back in, watching the PBS show "The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer's." Depressing. I'm not sure what more proof we need that there is no ghost in the machine, that we are our brains, and when our brains go - we go. Thoughts later, if I remember them (hey, I've seen the impact of the disease in my own family line - I'm allowed to joke about it - I almost have to).

Update: OK, so that was a depressing show - although, the coming advances bring some hope, not so much for those who suffer now, but for those who might develop it. I know it runs in my family; I watched my grandmother deteriorate over several years, until she was a vegetative shell of her former self, and her children decided it was time to let her go.

I'm sorry, but those who are against assisted suicide, in cases such as this, have my eternal contempt. I want the ability to choose the end of my life, such that I can go with full awareness of the end, proper time to prepare for it, and a chance to say goodbye to those I love. I don't want to waste away into nothing, dependent on everyone around me, unable to change anything about my own situation even if that was my wish.

Like I said, this cruel disease took my grandmother. I worry that now it might be slipping its unforgiving fingers around my own mother. She forgets many things, says things out of the blue - nothing that you'd ever notice by just speaking with her briefly, but taken as a whole, I have to admit, it worries me. Watching this, I wonder about my own future. My success and my happiness have all been due to this lump of grey matter in my head; reason and logic, and emotion and feeling, are my closest and most conflicted friends, making for a life I find very fulfilling - and yet, with this disease, all of that is at risk. I am at risk. My entire being is at risk.

That, quite frankly, scares the shit out of me.

Granted, I've probably got years to worry about it. By the time I find myself unable to remember a thought I had seven seconds ago, maybe it'll just be a pill to pop and all is well.

Or maybe not.

But I figure, forewarned is forearmed, so this is a topic about which I am learning what I can. Should it come for me, and there is no hope on the horizon, look for a "Memento" style series of reminders to prompt me into strapping on the hi-tops, pulling up the purple blanket, and overdosing on booze and prescription meds.

I will not be a burden to my family. I will not go quietly into that good night, particularly when I don't even know what night it is. Instead, I'll make it an early afternoon.

Until then, though, I'll still do my best to intrigue, amuse, or generally piss you folks off. Stick around, eh?