{"id":22319,"date":"2025-02-16T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22319"},"modified":"2025-02-16T10:23:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-16T10:23:36","slug":"shes-trying-to-stay-ahead-of-alzheimers-in-a-race-to-the-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22319","title":{"rendered":"She\u2019s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer\u2019s, in a Race to the Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. But if her life is going to end the way she wants, she will have to pick a date, sooner than she might like.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Listen to this article with reporter commentary<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption>
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\u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer\u2019s disease. It was diagnosed a year ago. She knows her cognitive function is slowly declining, and she knows what is coming. She spent years working as a nurse, and she cared for her sister, who had vascular dementia. For now, she is managing, with help from her three children and a big screen in the corner of the living room that they update remotely to remind her of the date and any appointments.<\/p>\n

In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be safe for her to stay at home alone. She had a bad fall and broke her elbow in August. She does not feel she can live with her children, who are busy with careers and children of their own. She is determined that she will never move to a nursing home, which she considers an intolerable loss of dignity. As a Dutch citizen, she is entitled by law to request that a doctor help her end her life when she reaches a point of unbearable suffering. And so she has applied for a medically assisted death.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2023, shortly before her diagnosis, Ms. Mekel joined a workshop organized by the Dutch Association for Voluntary End of Life. There, she learned how to draft an advance request document that would lay out her wishes, including the conditions under which she would request what is called euthanasia in the Netherlands. She decided it would be when she could not recognize her children and grandchildren, hold a conversation or live in her own home.<\/p>\n

But when Ms. Mekel\u2019s family doctor read the advance directive, she said that while she supported euthanasia, she could not provide it. She will not do it for someone who has by definition lost the capacity to consent.<\/p>\n

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Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies.She\u2019s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. But if her life is going to end the way she wants, she will have to pick a date, sooner than she might like.Listen to this article with reporter commentary\u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy,\u201d she said.Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer\u2019s disease. It was diagnosed a year ago. She knows her cognitive function is slowly declining, and she knows what is coming. She spent years working as a nurse, and she cared for her sister, who had vascular dementia. For now, she is managing, with help from her three children and a big screen in the corner of the living room that they update remotely to remind her of the date and any appointments.In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be safe for her to stay at home alone. She had a bad fall and broke her elbow in August. She does not feel she can live with her children, who are busy with careers and children of their own. She is determined that she will never move to a nursing home, which she considers an intolerable loss of dignity. As a Dutch citizen, she is entitled by law to request that a doctor help her end her life when she reaches a point of unbearable suffering. And so she has applied for a medically assisted death.In 2023, shortly before her diagnosis, Ms. Mekel joined a workshop organized by the Dutch Association for Voluntary End of Life. There, she learned how to draft an advance request document that would lay out her wishes, including the conditions under which she would request what is called euthanasia in the Netherlands. She decided it would be when she could not recognize her children and grandchildren, hold a conversation or live in her own home.But when Ms. Mekel\u2019s family doctor read the advance directive, she said that while she supported euthanasia, she could not provide it. She will not do it for someone who has by definition lost the capacity to consent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22321,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22319"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22322,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22319\/revisions\/22322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}