The northlondonhippy

Archive for the ‘death’ Category

There’s was an avalanche of media bull­shit this week over a doc­u­men­tary aired on SKY REAL LIVES which showed a man with motor neu­rone dis­ease tak­ing his own life at a Swiss clinic in 2006.

Switzer­land is cur­rently the only coun­try in the world which allows for­eign­ers to visit and par­take in a spot of assisted sui­cide. Go Switzerland!

I say the media was full of bull­shit because most out­lets con­cen­trated on the issue of whether or not you should show the “moment of death” on tele­vi­sion, for fear of “glam­ouris­ing death”.

WTF?

I haven’t seen the entire doc­u­men­tary, but I have seen some clips and how could show­ing a man with an absolutely hor­ri­ble dis­ease end­ing his life in any way glam­ourise death? There were no Hol­ly­wood films stars or strip­pers cheer­ing him on, the room he did it in wasn’t kit­ted out in fur rugs and leather sofas and they didn’t even have a live band.

There was no glam­our at all, but then there was absolutely noth­ing glam­ourous about it.

Tak­ing your own life is a seri­ous deci­sion, cer­tainly the most seri­ous deci­sion any indi­vid­ual can take and it was clear this poor man delib­er­ated for a very long time before mak­ing this final decision.

The debate should not have been about whether or not they should have shown this on tele­vi­sion, but why more coun­tries don’t have sys­tems like they do in Switzerland.

Why is it against the law to pro­vide the ulti­mate relief and end the suf­fer­ing of another human being? We do it for dogs and cats and horses — do they mat­ter more than people?

There are some rather hor­ri­ble mal­adies and afflic­tions out there which are hor­ren­dous and could cause immea­sur­able suf­fer­ing and pain to the per­son affected.

A slow, pro­tracted death is one of my big­ger fears, but that fear is expo­nen­tially exac­er­bated by the fact that I know if I wanted to choose to end the suf­fer­ing, it would not be pos­si­ble because of our archaic view of euthanasia.

The peo­ple most unsur­pris­ingly opposed to euthana­sia tend to be reli­gious nuts who believe only god’s will can decide when your life ends.

What a fuck­ing bunch of fuck­ing bull­shit. If that’s true, then any­one with a gun is god, because they can choose to end anyone’s life with rel­a­tive ease.

I have a real prob­lem tak­ing any­one seri­ously who is deeply reli­gious to the point of it cloud­ing their every thought and opin­ion, espe­cially when those mis­guided views increase the suf­fer­ing and pain of others.

That’s one of religion’s spe­cial­ity though, caus­ing oth­ers to need­lessly suffer.

I’ve recently been in touch with a dis­tant rela­tion of mine, who was in charge of dis­pens­ing a small stipend to myself and all my cousins fol­low­ing the pass­ing of a beloved aunt of mine.

When she wrote to me, her let­ter was pep­pered with all sorts of reli­gious ref­er­ences. I half expected her clos­ing salu­ta­tion to be “Yours in Christ” and was relieved that it wasn’t.

I had to really reign myself in when I replied to her, by keep­ing my sec­u­lar human­ist views at bay, though I couldn’t resist wish­ing her a “happy hol­i­days” in response to her “merry xmas”. Of course, she wrote out the entire word and cap­i­talised it.

I have noth­ing against my dis­tant rel­a­tive, the fact is I don’t really know her, hav­ing maybe met her twice before the age of 13, but its the way in which reli­gious peo­ple think every­one else should be equally reli­gious, and not just that but we should fol­low their reli­gion, because the other ones, even vari­a­tions on Chris­tian­ity, will send you straight to hell.

There is no hell. Hell is other people.

No, hell is being forced to live with a debil­i­tat­ing and ter­mi­nal con­di­tion, need­less suf­fer­ing a long, drawn out death because the law won’t let one be the archi­tect of one’s own fate.

The law is an ass. Or is that asshole?

The idea of my mind, my per­son­al­ity, the inter­nal bits of my brain con­tin­u­ing to func­tion as they do now, while being trapped in my body, wracked with pain, or worse paral­y­sis is a fate worse than death. Com­pared to any of that, death would be a trip to Disneyland.

And for all you reli­gious nuts out there, let me ask you this: If heaven is so god­damn great, why can’t we let the sick peo­ple arrive a lit­tle ear­lier than expected? Surely a just and lov­ing god would wel­come them with open arms.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t make us suffer.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t let us die.

If there were a god, there would be no need for heaven, because heaven would be here on earth and we would all already be angels.

If there were a god, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if some­one chose to end their life because of an intol­er­a­ble existence.

If there were a god, I wouldn’t get to post all of this on the inter­net and he’d have a stern word or two for me.

There is no god.

Why not be your own god? Why not deter­mine your own fate?

They say you make your own luck and I believe that’s true. I believe in self-actualisation and the power of an indi­vid­ual to over­come obsta­cles and suc­ceed in anything.

If the obsta­cle you’re encoun­ter­ing is insur­mount­able, then the only path to suc­cess is retreat.

If you’re dying a hor­ri­ble death, the only way to min­imise death’s vic­tory over you is to limit the amount of time you spend dying.

I thought about this a lot when I was ill last sum­mer, espe­cially when I could hardly walk and spent over a week try­ing to sleep sit­ting up on my sofa.

I imag­ined quite vividly that my con­di­tion could have been per­ma­nent and degen­er­a­tive, and what I would do in that situation.

I think you can work out the answer.

As much as I like to pre­tend I am per­fec­tion per­son­i­fied, the truth is I am a deeply flawed individual.

My life is lit­er­ally lit­tered with bad deci­sions and unfor­tu­nate choices, the results of which con­tinue to dog my days on a daily basis.

It’s fine to reflect upon ones mis­takes, as long as one is not mis­taken into think­ing that some­thing can be done to rec­tify them. The choices you make can’t usu­ally be undone and the con­se­quences will be with you until the day you die and may even con­tinue to effect oth­ers after you’re gone.

I’ve got no par­tic­u­lar deci­sions in mind, this has more to do with a gen­eral overview than any­thing specific.

I don’t want you to think every choice I’ve made in my life has been wrong, I’ve made some good choices too, but lately I’ve been think­ing about some of those moments in my life, where I zigged when per­haps I should have zagged.

It’s easy to sec­ond guess your own deci­sions after the fact, when the full­ness of time and expe­ri­ence yield the miss­ing pieces of the puz­zle that weren’t avail­able at the time of tak­ing the deci­sion. It’s also an exer­cise in futility.

Much of life is futile and point­less, so its not really enough of a rea­son not to think about these things.

There’s a the­ory that states every time a deci­sion is made, the uni­verse is split and alter­na­tive real­i­ties fol­low both paths and that all of exis­tence con­sists of a “multi-verse” of infi­nite exis­tence. Every­thing that can hap­pen, does hap­pen, just not in your reality.

Some­where in the multi-verse, there’s a ver­sion of me that suc­cess­ful, happy and fully ful­filled. No doubt taller, too.

How’d I get stuck in this real­ity? If there really is a multi-verse, then in at least one of them (and pos­si­bly many more), I’m king of the planet and in charge of you all. Don’t worry, if there are infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties, then you get to be king or queen of the world your­self, and I get to be your slave.

Not all of the real­i­ties in the multi-verse would be sunny, as I expect there are plenty that don’t turn out as well. Think about it, how many real­i­ties exist with­out me? Per­haps in some, I was still born and never even got to take my first breath.

I know that even when my deci­sions have been wrong, they’ve been right for me at the time. I have to believe that, because I can’t travel back in time and change them. At least not yet, any­way, but give me another six months and my time machine will be up and run­ning and I’ll be charg­ing loads of dosh for rides to the past and future. Think you can afford it?

My many per­son­al­ity flaws, at least as I see them, colour my every move. I’m cer­tainly my own worst enemy and I’m more respon­si­ble for hold­ing myself back than any­one else.

I used to gen­uinely believe that any­thing is pos­si­ble, but as I get older, I’m less con­vinced. As you get older, the cor­ri­dor of options nar­rows and while you may still cre­ate the illu­sion of choice, your choices become more and more lim­ited with each pass­ing day.

I can’t remem­ber where I heard this one, but it made a lot of sense: “You spend the first half of your life acquir­ing things and the sec­ond half hav­ing them all taken away from you.”

I’m unde­ni­ably in the 2nd half of my life. It’s not too much of a stretch to see where things are going for me. Its all down­hill from here.

Can you tell that my birth­day is approach­ing? It’s about 2 months away. Hey ho.

If I had the chance to do it all again, would I do things dif­fer­ently? Of course I would, what hon­est per­son wouldn’t?

That doesn’t mean I would do every­thing dif­fer­ently, but there are a few wrongs I would cer­tainly put right.

It doesn’t mat­ter because no one gets a sec­ond chance, except in the multi-verse real­ity where rein­car­na­tion hap­pens and it was just my luck not to end up in that one either.

Socrates said “the unex­am­ined life is not worth liv­ing”. If that is really true, then I have the most wor­thy life known to man.

Either that or my nar­cis­sis­tic ten­den­cies are start­ing to over­whelm being an obsessive-compulsive sociopath with manic-depressive tendencies.

You have a nice day, too.

This is turn­ing into the diary of the infirm.

Sorry, I know this used to be the cap­i­tal of online fun. Maybe I should bring back the vir­tual black­jack tables? At least the house would always win.

I’m still feel­ing crap. The med­ica­tion I’m tak­ing is pro­vid­ing me with a host of side effects, all of them seri­ously dull and no fun.

I saw my GP again last week, he changed the brand of the meds I’m tak­ing, which has sub­tracted a lot of the nau­sea, but not all of it and I still have the other side effects. Like breath­less­ness, heart pal­pi­ta­tions, dizzi­ness, headaches, tired­ness, con­fu­sion and forgetfulness…need I go on?

My GP ordered more tests, which he says is to rule out some other things, rather than con­firm any­thing he sus­pects. I think that’s sup­posed to be comforting.

My back seems to be hold­ing its own. I still have pain, but I can cope with it. I’m still see­ing the chi­ro­prac­tor, twice a week down from three vis­its and its always bet­ter after an adjust­ment. It tends to slide back a bit in between though, which I think is down to the fact that my thy­roid lev­els aren’t right yet. The inflam­ma­tion is being held at bay, but it’s not dis­ap­pear­ing com­pletely because what­ever orig­i­nally caused it, is still caus­ing it.

My thy­roid lev­els won’t be right for a while, as my GP says the dose I am on now, that is giv­ing me all these fun side effects, will most likely needed to be increased after my next blood test. Dou­bled, actu­ally. I can’t wait.

I haven’t felt like post­ing much lately, which is annoy­ing because there’s loads I’d like to write about, I just don’t have the atten­tion span to focus very long.

For all the jokes and ref­er­ences I’ve made about being mid­dle aged, I’ve never really felt it in my bones. These days, not only do I feel it, I think I look the part too. It’s all dread­fully tedious and I’m bored of it all already.

I liked it bet­ter when I thought I was healthy. Clearly, I wasn’t really healthy, but I thought I was and isn’t that what really matter?

My doc­tor says that once my med­ica­tion is sorted out, I’ll feel bet­ter than ever. Right now, I find that really hard to believe. When you feel shitty every day, its hard to be even a lit­tle bit pos­i­tive about anything.

The fol­low­ing is a hippy health update:

I haven’t men­tioned how I’ve been feel­ing for a bit, because I’ve pretty much been feel­ing the same. There’re two pieces of good news, though…I’ve got a defin­i­tive diag­no­sis. I have some­thing called Hashimoto’s Dis­ease.

Hashimoto’s Dis­ease is an auto-immune dis­or­der, prob­a­bly genetic in ori­gin and it causes my bod­ies T-cells to attack my Thy­roid Gland, result­ing in Hypothy­roidism, which is an under-active Thy­roid and causes all sorts of metab­o­lism problems.

And Dr. Hashimoto is the guy that dis­cov­ered it and it is the first recog­nised auto-immune disorder.

This diag­no­sis ties together all sorts of symp­toms I’ve had over the last 6 months to a year that I hadn’t really put together or even thought were symp­toms of any­thing. I just thought I was get­ting old!

Mainly, it explains the acute inflam­ma­tion in my back, which con­tin­ues to cause me pain, though not nearly as bad as it was when it started. I never thought my back prob­lems would be caused by some­thing big­ger and scarier!

My other symp­toms included loss of energy, appetite and con­cen­tra­tion, poor sleep, a lump in my throat and flut­ters in my chest. I’ve had all of those things to one degree or another and I sim­ply attrib­uted them to mid­dle age and my erratic work and sleep pat­terns. Silly me. I didn’t put any of this together.

When the back trou­ble started, I began treat­ment with a chi­ro­prac­tor, who I credit with help­ing a lot, but I still couldn’t com­pletely shake the pain. After three weeks I saw my GP, because I thought I might have Shin­gles — I had a minor rash on my side. It turned out I didn’t have Shin­gles, but my GP ordered an x-ray (which was neg­a­tive) and a bat­tery of blood tests, which included a test for Thy­roid function.

The test came back and con­firmed my diag­no­sis. My GP also prod­ded my throat and said he could feel my swollen Thy­roid Gland. I had noticed a slight sen­sa­tion when swal­low­ing for a while, but didn’t think any­thing of it. It wasn’t painful, or even uncom­fort­able, it was just different.

I’ve learned a valu­able les­son and that’s to lis­ten more closely to what my body is telling me and to do some­thing about it!

Thank­fully, Hashimoto’s Dis­ease is very treat­able and I will be on a med­ica­tion called Levathy­rox­ine for the rest of my life. It replaces the Thy­roid Hor­mone my body no longer pro­duces and once they get my dosage to the cor­rect level, my body will go back to nor­mal, what­ever nor­mal is…

I’m hav­ing side effects from this med­ica­tion, nau­sea, sweats, and pal­pi­ta­tions mainly, but these should pass soon. I hope.

Left untreated, it could even­tu­ally cause heart fail­ure and death, so its a very good thing my doc­tor caught this. I’m lucky I have a good GP too.

Oh and the other good news is thanks to Hashimoto’s Dis­ease and my cool new daily med­ica­tion, I now get free NHS pre­scrip­tions for life. Now all I need them to do is approve cannabis pre­scrip­tions on the NHS and this dis­ease stops being a curse and it becomes a real blessing!

Any­way kids, your Uncle Hippy is on the mend and it won’t be long before I’m back to my old self and try­ing to touch you all up again!

Greet­ings and salu­ta­tions. Hello. Wel­come. Yes, I am still alive.

Well, I’m as alive as I can be, fol­low­ing my recent health troubles.

For the last 15 days I’ve been suf­fer­ing with seri­ous back trou­ble. I could barely walk for the first week or so, every step was pure agony. Sit­ting was agony too and lay­ing down was impos­si­ble. I was well and truly fucked.

I’ve been see­ing a chi­ro­prac­tor and I think he’s helped a lot. I’ve had count­less adjust­ments, start­ing with a home visit because I couldn’t get to his office. I’m walk­ing well now and have much less pain, I’m hop­ing to return to work later in the week.

This episode really freaked me out, I was prac­ti­cally crip­pled. I couldn’t even make it to the loo with­out assis­tance from Mrs. H, I couldn’t get dressed, pre­pare a meal, do any house­hold chores. I couldn’t even sit at my desk and use my iMac, I couldn’t use my lap­top for the first week or so. If it wasn’t for my iPhone, I would have been com­pletely cut off from the world.

There’s a sense of panic and des­per­a­tion that one is over­come with in these sit­u­a­tions and I was no excep­tion. As I sat upright on my sofa, for the fifth or sixth night, des­per­ately try­ing to snatch an hour or two of light, unsat­is­fy­ing sleep, dark and dan­ger­ous thoughts would bub­ble to the sur­face of my brain.

What if this is permanent?

What if this is the begin­ning of my slow, grad­ual health decline lead­ing to my pre­ma­ture death.

What if I don’t get better?

What if the excru­ci­at­ing pain never ends?

What if.…

I found myself hav­ing mini-panic attacks, hyper­ven­ti­lat­ing slightly and relief not com­ing through the codeine or spliffs.

Though my back may be improv­ing, I find myself filled with a lin­ger­ing, nag­ging depres­sion over my future.

Is this the begin­ning of the end?

They say that every sec­ond after your born, you are one sec­ond closer to death, so in the more gen­eral sense, the end has no begin­ning; or rather the begin­ning of the end, begins at the very beginning.

But that’s not what I mean. I just have this hor­ri­ble, deep feel­ing that my best years are well and truly behind me. It’s prob­a­bly true, as its undoubt­edly true that I’ve lived more than half my life already as the chances of me even com­ing close to 90 are slim to none.

I’m feel­ing my mor­tal­ity and I don’t like it. I feel like I’ve aged in the last fort­night, like my years have finally caught up with me. I don’t feel youth­ful, as I always have, instead I’ve felt like a decrepit old man.

The thought of a slow, painful slide towards death fills me with dread. I don’t want to suf­fer through a litany of minor and major health prob­lems until one of them finally snuffs me out. That just sounds horrible!

I sup­pose death is very much on my mind because of the death of my cat a few weeks ago, which I wit­nessed first­hand in all its mis­er­able, tor­tur­ous glory. While her death was mer­ci­fully quick, she didn’t go gen­tly into that goodnight.

Watch­ing her con­tort and strug­gle against the hand of the grim reaper has had a pro­found effect on me, though I am still try­ing to deci­pher what exactly what effect it has had. I’d never actu­ally been with any liv­ing crea­ture, human or ani­mal, at the point of death until her pass­ing three weeks ago.

My younger brother, who is far more spir­i­tual than I could ever hope to be, says I absorbed some­thing from this expe­ri­ence, which man­i­fested itself with my back trou­ble, or per­haps was this was the trig­ger for it. I can’t say I am convinced.

When the chi­ro­prac­tor was tak­ing my back­ground and his­tory, one of his first ques­tions was if I suf­fered any trau­mas recently; my cat died about a week before the real pain started, though I had sore­ness in my back a few days before it really hit me.

The chi­ro­prac­tor said that my back trou­ble was build­ing up over time, that the inflam­ma­tion had wors­ened to the point of spasms in my back mus­cles, caus­ing acute pain.

Is this a coin­ci­dence of tim­ing or defin­i­tive cause and effect? I couldn’t really say. You could con­vinc­ingly put across either side of this argu­ment and I just don’t know.

All of this has left me hat­ing aging and mor­tal­ity even more than before and I didn’t think that was pos­si­ble. What’s a self-confessed sociopath and ama­teur nar­cis­sist to do?

Keep hop­ing that some­one works out a way to down­load my brain into a com­puter after the death of my body, so I can con­tinue to exist, in dig­i­tal form. How else can I hope to keep post­ing dri­vel here through­out eternity?