SageTree

Pat claims that she is already 'dead', so he honoured his vows in marriage 'till death do us part'.


What do you think about this?

I don't intended for this to be a Pat Robertson bash-a-thon.....

Rather, I think it'd be more beneficial to talk about what death is, what is means and things more along that line.


Kindly,
SageTree

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Stonie Jo

Death to me means when your heart stops pumping blood.

I know you don't want a PR bash fest, but I can't help a little...funny how he can conveniently decide how he want to interpret his marriage vows -he may think she's already dead, but I don't think Alzhiemers is death, isn't it a disease? So, since it goes "in sickness and in health, 'till death do us part.", I think he bailed on her in her sickness.

This topic touches on so many things I am passionate about it's hard for me not to be a shit-head!! If you don't like this post Sage, I'll delete it.

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I've thought of something cool a thousand times for this but as I sit here stoned right now I can't come up with any of them............

SageTree

Nah, your post is good Stonie Jo.. I thought I'd try to keep the flood walls up, but I understand the need to rant on PR... so unleash your wrath, it's really okay with me.

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Stonie Jo

I do believe that death is when the body no longer works and quits. It's done. That's death. Alzheimer's is only a sickness! I don't watch these shows. I watched my grandma give up everything and follow some crazy evangalist guy across the country. Then when she got senile (that's what they called alzheimers when I was a kid) she used to sit and talk to the evangalists on TV all day.

It's hard for me to not make this a religious discussion!

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I've thought of something cool a thousand times for this but as I sit here stoned right now I can't come up with any of them............

Sir-Ex

Of course she isn't dead. If she was dead she couldn't have alzheimers. Dude's a knob.

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Smile

Ditch the cigs!!!!!!

eldizle

dead is when there is no brain activity, and the body is being kept alive by artificial means, if at all.

Rather like the man giving the advice to abandon a loved one in the throes of a horrible disease, at the time they need their own loved ones the most.

i guess i should put quotation marks around loved one here, but meh.

pr is one shockjock out of many of the televangelists.

Mercury

I rarely watch the 700 Club but when I do I can't help but give Pat credit for his sound advice. He doesn't play around with serious matters. Pat gets right down to it and advocates making tough decisions during tough times.

My grandfather is slipping into alzheimers rapidly and I know first hand that it is a frustrating disease. My own grandfather who has known me all my life doesn't know anything about me anymore. The only thing he knows about me is my name and my face. And my poor grandmother who has to live with him is really at her wits end trying to deal with his uselessness.

My sister even used to work at a hospital with alzheimers patients and what she tells me is that eventually they cease to comprehend anything. They have no memory, no social boundries, no conception of themselves.

They're fucking zombies. It's a sad but it's true that they are no longer "with us".

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catastrophe

This makes me sad. My grandma has been slipping away with alzheimers since I can remember, but as of the past five years it's gotten much worse. She still remembers me, though, but it's getting harder and harder to find ways to spend quality time together because of limitations (remembering what is planned for tomorrow, or saturday)
I'm trying to put together photo albums because that's all I knowto do to help... it makes me want to cry when she calls me asking "Did you get me these new slippers? I've been wearing them all day"
I didn't get the slippers; I've never seen them, either. I say yes though... because its easier that way


sorry sage you wanted a death thread not an alzheimers one "/

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“Liƒë Is a Drëam,
From Which Wë First Must Wakë
Bëƒorë Wë May Drëam Again…”
RIP Gov

“To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.”

Roach

silly wabbit

If you had, I'd be tempted to tell you what I think of the A_ _hole.

Jim and Tammy had more credibility, and they were outright thieves.

Death is what happens when all life in an organism ceases.

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לזיין את הקופים

Xil

they might not be able to show you love anymore, but you can still show them love

take care of them in their time of need

or pull a pat robertson and get reborn as a slug

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Sir-Ex

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Smile

Ditch the cigs!!!!!!

medicinal only

I feel sorry for the stupid asses who seek out Pat Robertson's brand of organized superstition for personal help. Pat Robertson is, and will always be, a bigot, a narrow-minded, greedy, Bible thumping, hypocrite. Jesus, being Pat's intimate, once said " What you do unto the least of me, you do unto me."

mothernature

This is incredibly stupid. On so many levels.

Why can't he just give the advice that people have been doing anyway for years. Take care of your spouse and have an affair.

But nooooooooooo, he has to say she's dead when she obviously isn't.

When you negate your responsibility to your family member's who are sick, you negate the family. "Don't get sick, or you'll be on your own, baby".

Fuck PR. Fuck those people who want to throw out the sick. If you're one of them, then fuck you, too.

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Sometimes sleep is the best revenge- Luke

SageTree

This stuff is all okay folks, when I said no 'bash-a-thon' I meant that I would like to talk about the issues of death, including Alzheimers etc... but didn't want people to post ONLY bashing PR... you know... keep it a little more on topic and to task, cause I'm pretty sure we ALL think the same thing about PR more or less

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deadhead94

On the one hand, fuck pat robertson and anyone remotely like him. but on the other hand, we don't even know what causes Alzheimer's disease so we are nowhere near a cure or effective treatment. She is effectively dead once she starts losing her cognitive faculties.

Normal people are not equipped to take care of someone like that. They are better off in a hospital.

Also, death is the irreversible cessation of essential brain functions. Your heart and lungs have nothing to do with it. Cognition is an essential part of being Human.

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SageTree

Personally speaking, hospital or none, I wouldn't divorce my Wife for having dementia/Alzheimers.

I agree deadhead about better help being available other places though, so true.

It's hard to be a care taker and a spouse in the first place, without the added insult of not being able to help correctly/effectively.


I've worked with people in nursing homes who have it, and up to a point, they are very much with it and it's not until much later (depending really on how fast the onset is) that they start to loose their body functions.

On the other hand... I've also seen the knowing behind these 'dead' people's eyes when a family member comes to visit.

Sadly.. I've also seen some that don't know their family or wife from Adam, as they say.


It's a strange strange thing.... and in a way, it a natural, although hard to witness, way to let loose the grip of attachment.

Like when someone dies a slow death from Aids/Cancer or other wasting diseases.
When they are deaddead, in my own life, it's easier to accept.

Alzheimers isn't different in that way.

People who are dying slowly usually seem to slip off out of consciousness and go into a coma as they shut down.

They are closer to dead than we are at that point, because living, you could say, is a process of dying to some degree.



The long term patients are where I have seen the conflict come in with Alzheimers and Cancers as well.

The spouse naturally needs support and you could say affection/closeness as well...
The transition as I have witnessed seems natural, that a partner arises from the rubble of the situation.


I think Pat's take is interesting for him, and religiously speaking... it's a moral question, not as much a 'right' or 'wrong', but 'whats right for you/us?' question.


I don't want to say that people with low functioning brains are dead though...

There are lots of people in my life who have had mental challenges/limited capacity and I truly say, they are no less alive and feeling.

Living in the mind of an Alzheimers patient.... I can't imagine.
When they are still coherent enough to see the lose of faculties, it's frustrating and the persons subconscious personality comes out.
Sometimes it's an angry raging person.
Other times it's meekness.
Or acceptance....

Some people go with more 'grace', I guess you could say.


But back to what I was saying.... it's probably REALLY real to those folks,
Like when you know you are experiencing things in dreams, but you aren't aware that you are dreaming.
There are still terrifying instance as well as great moments of pleasure.

This MUST be what it's like to cognate the experience of losing your awareness/memory?

I remember this one old lady name Ruth.

She used to tell me her husband was coming to pick her up and take her out for dinner tonight. (He'd been dead for over 5 years at this point) And it nearly broke my heart to hear her say so...

And it was even harder 30 mins later when Ruth was wailing and crying in her room because she had a moment of clarity where she remembered her husband was dead... not coming to get her.

The 30 mins later... it's like nothing EVER happened either way.






So yea... I personally don't see these people as 'dead'.
But I understand there is a line when it's more like death than life.

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deadhead94

If I am ever diagnosed with Alzhiemer's, I will take like a week to get my shit in order then I'm going to commit suicide.

By the time they can even make the diagnosis I'll be too far gone for myself.

Everyone already knows this. So they will have had ample time to prepare if that's what they must do.

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HTAM

I've heard that sometimes the right choice is not always the easiest choice to make. This sitchy-ation is definitely one of them .

For those of you that have struggled with your relatives- I completely appreciate where you are coming from.

There were a few times when my Mom had some BAD reactions to drugs she was prescribed for pain management. She was not herself by any means.

One of those times lead to a smackdown between her, 3 doctors and 2 nurses at the hospital when I brought her to the ER. She called me and told me she thought something was wrong with the meds she just got. We were there all of 20 minutes and she had cardio leads and two IVs going to try and help flush the meds. She was tired of waiting to be seen in the ER. Started ripping out her IVs and tearing her cardio leads off. I was trying to calm her down and she yelled "GET AWAY FROM ME, I DON'T HAVE A SON!" So she held them off for about a minute or so, shoving the bed at them and throwing whatever wasn't nailed down across the room. It was quite impressive seeing the badass in my Mom that day.

She also let the whole floor know "THAT'S A CHEAP WAY TO COP A FEEL!" as they were restraining her.

I walked out of the room and let them wrestle her on to the bed so they could strap her down. Very upsetting to see my mom restrained that way, but what could I do? I stayed.

Many times after that, as her condition deteriorated, she would ask questions about things- like the slipper questions. In Hospice, every morning when I showed up to see her or take her out for lunch or movie, she would have all of her stuff packed up ready to go home. That was tough. Until the end, I would take her back to her house so she could take a nap in her own bed. And then I would get her back to the hospice with a white lie about how we need to get her meds or something that she deemed important to have.

Every day before we left, I went to the Nurse and got a DNR at my Mom's request. That was great. But I accepted the document and kept it on my person so her wishes would be followed. Here is its 9 years later and I have tears streaming down my face as I type this.

Anyway, she was more 'out' then 'in' as the sun set on her horizon, but the 'in' moments, the ones when I could see the happiness in her eyes- it didn't matter to me if she was going to hang on to that memory the same way I have. Only that we were sharing the moment together.

It's an honour to hold the hand (metaphorically or actually) of someone taking their last 'steps' in this life.Don't overlook that, or you could come to regret your 'head in the sand' decision when it's too late.

In whatever way you can, love them by being there until the end.

Mercury

There is no reason that a family should have to wait hand and foot, day and night on someone who doesn't know the difference between shitting his pants and and a birthday party for his wife of 60 years.

If you can afford to put them in a facility, good. If you can't put them somewhere, then hand them a gun.

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Lloydy

I can see his point of view, im sure it can get to a point where a person has deteriorated to the point where they arent the person you once knew but you'd have to be a heartless bastard to think like that.

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