Senility
Senility is the most horrifying thing America can think of right now. Now that the threat of terrorism is a joke, and polio is at an all time low, what have we really got left to fear? Aside from our kids on MySpace, only losing our minds. This is generally taken to be a fate worse than death, probably for confused reasons. I blame Time Magazine and its ilk.
First though, the name of the disease. Most cases of senility are Alzheimer's disease. When you have a folk disease, most of whose sufferers have the same scientific disease, why would you throw out the folk name? The non-Alzheimer's senile patients sure, rename their disease, but why not let most senile patients go on being senile? Scientists like to boss everybody around in little ways.
Now then. What is the big deal with senility? It's a bad thing, no doubt. If I had to pick "rest of my life senile" or "rest of my life alert" it would be no contest. I would also not like to die of a heart attack or stroke, but go on living forever, the creature of a new century in which nobody dies. It's not going to happen (or is it? Let me know, okay?) You've got to die of something, and if you die of Alzheimer's, you've done pretty well. Look at this chart: Of all the diseases profiled, Alzheimer's has, by a fair margin, the highest age of death. Even considering that the average case of Alzheimer's lingers for 8 years, you are still going to have 77 years of perfect health and bright smiles (and a few more of putting your keys in the oven and bright smiles).
Much as people like to live a long time, though, and bankrupt the government doing it, I get the idea that fear of premature death is not what motivates them here. What upsets people who don't want to get Alzheimer's is sticky and insoluble, and it is feelings. People who don't want to be senile are afraid (as is my understanding) of A) losing their dignity B) losing their personal memories and C) becoming a burden on others.
Let's take these one at a time. Ian Shoales said that nostalgia is the most useless emotion, but I have to say it's pride. Keeping your dignity is important if you are trying to be a society matron in 1860's Atlanta. It is important if you are running for political office. What escapes me is how dignity is important for an old person, who has made all the friends and impressed all the strangers he is ever going to. Nobody is judging you. Swallow your pride and be sick. Even if you've made a hundred million enemies like Ronald Reagan, not many of them are going to have the heart to laugh at you.
Losing your memories is genuinely bad. They're pretty much all we have of conciousness. If you lose your memories you might as well be a sea sponge, and if you're a sea sponge you might as well be dead. Try to hang on to your memories as long as you can. If there's one thing stereotypes about old people tell us, it's that they are chiefly valuable for their stories. On the other hand, you are going to lose your memories, senility or no. You are going to cease to be a loveable old man, and begin to be a vegetable. Whether you have been planted in the ground or propped up in a bed should make no difference to you, from where you stand. You're unconscious either way.
Finally, the argument that you will be a burden to your descendants. They will have to feed you and clothe you and supervise you and resent you for years and years, the thinking runs. This argument has two interpretations, I think. The first is the crude cost argument. Having Alzheimer's disease is expensive, someone might say. I don't want to have to have my family shoulder the cost of my dead-inside frame. And of course, no one does. But we don't have similar nightmares about needing heart surgery or face transplants or needing to be put on an impossibly expensive medicine for the rest of our lives. Those are all awfully expensive, and I guess we worry about them from time to time, but I think the driving force of this argument is the emotional burden on one's relatives.
But, this argument is even weaker. Once again, it's bad to have Alzheimer's disease, and it's bad to have a relative with Alzheimer's disease. But it's also bad to have parents with smallpox or Chagas disease. People's parents get sick and die very often. Is senility worse? Well you have to watch them degenerate, but is that really such a bad thing? I would think that sudden deaths are the ones to fear. You wake up one morning and your grandfather is dead of a stroke. And you're probably very upset, and all the more so because you're startled. You certainly weren't expecting that. So much for all your jolly plans in the near future.
By contrast, with a long slow degenerative disease like Alzheimer's, you have plenty of time to get used to the idea of Grandpa being dead. As ghoulish as that may sound, I think that for spectators it is probably a lot more comfortable to ease into death than to jump in all at once. I don't knowwho else shares my intuition, but I would be surprised if everybody went the other way on this question. Maybe I just dislike surprises more than most people.
So I'm not sure why everybody is so jumpy about senility. It has its downsides, mainly that it is fatal, and the mental incapacity is nothing to be proud of, but you undoubtedly get used to that by degrees. In fact, given its high average age of death, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I can't think of any disease I'd rather die of.
First though, the name of the disease. Most cases of senility are Alzheimer's disease. When you have a folk disease, most of whose sufferers have the same scientific disease, why would you throw out the folk name? The non-Alzheimer's senile patients sure, rename their disease, but why not let most senile patients go on being senile? Scientists like to boss everybody around in little ways.
Now then. What is the big deal with senility? It's a bad thing, no doubt. If I had to pick "rest of my life senile" or "rest of my life alert" it would be no contest. I would also not like to die of a heart attack or stroke, but go on living forever, the creature of a new century in which nobody dies. It's not going to happen (or is it? Let me know, okay?) You've got to die of something, and if you die of Alzheimer's, you've done pretty well. Look at this chart: Of all the diseases profiled, Alzheimer's has, by a fair margin, the highest age of death. Even considering that the average case of Alzheimer's lingers for 8 years, you are still going to have 77 years of perfect health and bright smiles (and a few more of putting your keys in the oven and bright smiles).
Much as people like to live a long time, though, and bankrupt the government doing it, I get the idea that fear of premature death is not what motivates them here. What upsets people who don't want to get Alzheimer's is sticky and insoluble, and it is feelings. People who don't want to be senile are afraid (as is my understanding) of A) losing their dignity B) losing their personal memories and C) becoming a burden on others.
Let's take these one at a time. Ian Shoales said that nostalgia is the most useless emotion, but I have to say it's pride. Keeping your dignity is important if you are trying to be a society matron in 1860's Atlanta. It is important if you are running for political office. What escapes me is how dignity is important for an old person, who has made all the friends and impressed all the strangers he is ever going to. Nobody is judging you. Swallow your pride and be sick. Even if you've made a hundred million enemies like Ronald Reagan, not many of them are going to have the heart to laugh at you.
Losing your memories is genuinely bad. They're pretty much all we have of conciousness. If you lose your memories you might as well be a sea sponge, and if you're a sea sponge you might as well be dead. Try to hang on to your memories as long as you can. If there's one thing stereotypes about old people tell us, it's that they are chiefly valuable for their stories. On the other hand, you are going to lose your memories, senility or no. You are going to cease to be a loveable old man, and begin to be a vegetable. Whether you have been planted in the ground or propped up in a bed should make no difference to you, from where you stand. You're unconscious either way.
Finally, the argument that you will be a burden to your descendants. They will have to feed you and clothe you and supervise you and resent you for years and years, the thinking runs. This argument has two interpretations, I think. The first is the crude cost argument. Having Alzheimer's disease is expensive, someone might say. I don't want to have to have my family shoulder the cost of my dead-inside frame. And of course, no one does. But we don't have similar nightmares about needing heart surgery or face transplants or needing to be put on an impossibly expensive medicine for the rest of our lives. Those are all awfully expensive, and I guess we worry about them from time to time, but I think the driving force of this argument is the emotional burden on one's relatives.
But, this argument is even weaker. Once again, it's bad to have Alzheimer's disease, and it's bad to have a relative with Alzheimer's disease. But it's also bad to have parents with smallpox or Chagas disease. People's parents get sick and die very often. Is senility worse? Well you have to watch them degenerate, but is that really such a bad thing? I would think that sudden deaths are the ones to fear. You wake up one morning and your grandfather is dead of a stroke. And you're probably very upset, and all the more so because you're startled. You certainly weren't expecting that. So much for all your jolly plans in the near future.
By contrast, with a long slow degenerative disease like Alzheimer's, you have plenty of time to get used to the idea of Grandpa being dead. As ghoulish as that may sound, I think that for spectators it is probably a lot more comfortable to ease into death than to jump in all at once. I don't knowwho else shares my intuition, but I would be surprised if everybody went the other way on this question. Maybe I just dislike surprises more than most people.
So I'm not sure why everybody is so jumpy about senility. It has its downsides, mainly that it is fatal, and the mental incapacity is nothing to be proud of, but you undoubtedly get used to that by degrees. In fact, given its high average age of death, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I can't think of any disease I'd rather die of.
posted by apk01004 at 2:24 AM
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