Staying alive - well sort of

Original title of this piece "We are all mortal and we should recognise it" - that will be used another day.

I am about to be controversial. If you come here looking for fun and jokes and offbeat humour, maybe this is not the piece to be reading. So go and read some of my other stuff.

Louis Prima was a very talented Italian-American musician who managed to adapt to the times. He went through the jazz of the 1930s, Big Bands in the 1940s and Rock 'n' Roll in the 1950s, ever with an ear for what his audience wanted. A man of great humour and showmanship as well - there is plenty of his stuff on YouTube, check it out, it is well worth it IMHO.

 The end of his life though is a tragic tale. In 1975 he found that he had a tumour on the brain, suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, and went into a coma from which he never emerged.

He was in a coma for something like three years.

I cannot imagine what being in a coma involves. Peaceful sleep? Occasional nightmares resulting in trauma? Apparently there is brain deterioration, so if you do emerge conscious from it, it affects your ability to think and move and react, wharrever.

Not something I would wish upon my worst enemy.

To the point where I would say here and now that if I ever fall into that state, you have my full permission to switch the machine off and remove any feeding tube - and do not take forever to do it. I have complete faith in medical science, the professionals out there should agree with what is hopeless. You may be alive, but it is not LIVING! LIVING involves doing something positive, being able to move, think, react usw, even people in wheelchairs can do positive things (check out Stephen Hawking some time and see what he has to combat and how positive he is).

But being kept alive in a vegetative state from which the very very great possibility is you will not emerge? Sorry, no.

I actually believe that we should when fully healthy and conscious be able to state this in writing as well (or not if you want to be kept alive no matter what!), so if it should happen people will know the right action to take.

Your decision, nobody else imposing an agenda, nobody deciding for you when they do not understand what you should have chosen if you could have.

And for non-regular readers - yes, I am an atheist, so any religious agendas should not apply in my case. I will speak for nobody else on this though.

DISCLAIMER:  this is absolutely NOT a comment on the Prima family or any decision that they took.