Yes, but it is YOUR life. I understand there may be moments of giving up and being helped through at those times is appreciated later. We are talking about a different situation. We are talking about when there is no foreseeable help to have any quality of life. And, in my opinion, it is NOT up to someone else to decide for you what happens to you.

True story: once upon a time there was a man named Tucker Stilley. He was a musician and a multi-media artist, and successful in the film editing business with his wife, who was also an accomplished film editor. They had a gorgeous daughter. And then he was diagnosed with ALS.

He prepared for it, gathered his friends and family to help him get through the trauma of slowly becoming a "brain in a jar". He was only 30-something when he was diagnosed. He passed away just two years ago, at age 60 (we were the same age). He spent more than 10 of those years in bed, immobile, unable to speak, eat, or breathe on his own, with tubes for feeding and waste, using a thing called an "eyewriter" and an overhead computer to communicate (sometimes one letter for each word at a time) and do art. By the end, he only had the use of one eye, which made communicating especially difficult.

I - would not have been able to live like that. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of other people who knew him, family, friends, admirers, co-workers, teachers, neighbors. He also had financial support through donations, since disability didn't cover his home care at first, and the costs for oxygen, tubes, health monitor machines, the hospital bed, 24/7 nurses (not merely home care - actual RNs) exceeded $10,000 per month. But I know that if I was informed that my last days would be spent as a brain in a jar, I would want to end it before it progressed that far. I wouldn't be able to handle it at all. If you've ever read Frank Herbert's Dune series, it'd basically be a Guild Navigator in a ship out in space, in mid-fold, that didn't ever actually go anywhere.

I'd likely tell them - once I'm no longer able to breathe or eat without tubes in my neck and stomach - it's time to let me go. I can't even imagine - and I've tried. I wanted to empathize with Tucker. But I just was incapable of it. I can't imagine it. He was amazing. Created art, which was replicated by a host of volunteer assistants who took the digitalized artwork and brought it to life in galleries for sale (which also helped support him and his care).

His daughter has no memory of him being healthy. She just graduated from college. An amazing family. But - that's a true story of what someone -could- do, should they choose to stick with it to the end. You need some serious fortitude to withstand that kind of existence I think. But Tucker certainly had that.