Today God has considered me worthy of His grace to start another year of life in this land of the living. I’m filled with gratitude but I lament the fact that euthanasia is still not permitted here.
Singaporeans are living longer but there is one segment of their lives that health experts and the authorities want to shorten – their years spent in ill health.
The average of eight years, out of a total of 82, that Singaporeans spend in ill health was put in sharp focus by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a speech back in 2017.
The Prime Minister cited figures from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015.
The study was by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. It is one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date analyses of the state of the world’s health.
Broken down by gender, Singapore’s females had an average of nine years of ill health in 2015, compared to 10.1 for Japan and 10.3 for South Korea.
Singapore’s men had 7.5 years of ill health on average, compared to 8.4 for Japan and 8.2 for South Korea.
I hope I will stay healthy for a long, long time. I don’t want to spend my old age wracked with pain, suffering Anhedonia, being transmogrified into a half-dead, shriveled living vegetable full of rotting, pus-oozing bedsores, being fed pureed food through a tube in the nose and peeing and shitting into diapers.
If I can’t spend my sunset years traveling the world, eating and drinking whatever I enjoy, then please, give me assisted suicide.
Or pull the plug on me!
You’ll have my eternal gratitude.
The secret is to die, God willing, when you want to, and not when He proposes. – Eduviges Dyada, in Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo