Quote Originally Posted by lph View Post
But I wondered about the first one. What kind of response were they expecting or hoping for? ... there's only so much you can predict about how long a person has left, isn't there? It seems to me that only sensible response to "how long will you live" is exactly that - "I don't know."
For me and hopefully for you, that's absolutely right. But the population in the study was people who qualified for hospice. And the choice that glaringly absent from the survey was any choice that took an active role.

I've already done some hard thinking and writing about what is and is not an acceptable quality of life for me. IMO every adult should do that, because it's healthy young people who have the most uncertainty about when a sudden trauma or acute illness could permanently deprive them of quality of life. It's an individual decision and one that people can have extreme differences about. But when an individual has decided that she's "ready to go" - which is difficult enough to admit in our culture - it's just sad when cultural or family pressures deprive them of the option.