QuietGuy
Well-known member
We may be lonely, single, friendless, etc, but that's nothing compared to this guy's tragic condition:
I am a 56-year-old man who suffered a catastrophic stroke in June 2005 whilst on a business trip to Athens, Greece.
It left me paralysed below the neck and unable to speak. I need help in almost every aspect of my life.
I cannot scratch if I itch. I cannot pick my nose if it is blocked and I can only eat if I am fed like a baby - only I won't grow out of it, unlike a baby.
I have no privacy or dignity left. I am washed, dressed and put to bed by carers who are, after all, still strangers.
I am fed up with my life and don't want to spend the next 20 years or so like this. Am I grateful that the Athens doctors saved my life?
No, I am not. If I had my time again, and knew then what I know now, I would have not called the ambulance but let nature take its course.
(See BBC News, Guardian, Independent)
Mr Nicklinson, of Melksham, Wiltshire, communicates by blinking or nodding his head at letters on a board.
He has stopped talking to most people as it is so frustrating to communicate using an alphabet board.
His paralysis beneath the neck means he cannot kill himself other than by prolonged starvation, which he does not want to do, and he is not willing to risk his wife being jailed for life on a murder charge if she kills him.
He spends most of each day in his specially adapted bungalow watching daytime TV and painstakingly writing a memoir with the help of a computer. He also writes letters to people on the right-to-die debate. A carer stays overnight and helps him to move his limbs three or four times during the night.
"Often he coughs and he needs to have his saliva wiped or he needs to be repositioned because he has flopped over," explains a statement prepared by his solicitor Bindmans.
Now, of course, awareness of this guy's condition does nothing to solve our own problems... but I think it puts everything into perspective
After reading his tragic story, I realised that actually my problems really aren't so bad after all...
I am a 56-year-old man who suffered a catastrophic stroke in June 2005 whilst on a business trip to Athens, Greece.
It left me paralysed below the neck and unable to speak. I need help in almost every aspect of my life.
I cannot scratch if I itch. I cannot pick my nose if it is blocked and I can only eat if I am fed like a baby - only I won't grow out of it, unlike a baby.
I have no privacy or dignity left. I am washed, dressed and put to bed by carers who are, after all, still strangers.
I am fed up with my life and don't want to spend the next 20 years or so like this. Am I grateful that the Athens doctors saved my life?
No, I am not. If I had my time again, and knew then what I know now, I would have not called the ambulance but let nature take its course.
(See BBC News, Guardian, Independent)
Mr Nicklinson, of Melksham, Wiltshire, communicates by blinking or nodding his head at letters on a board.
He has stopped talking to most people as it is so frustrating to communicate using an alphabet board.
His paralysis beneath the neck means he cannot kill himself other than by prolonged starvation, which he does not want to do, and he is not willing to risk his wife being jailed for life on a murder charge if she kills him.
He spends most of each day in his specially adapted bungalow watching daytime TV and painstakingly writing a memoir with the help of a computer. He also writes letters to people on the right-to-die debate. A carer stays overnight and helps him to move his limbs three or four times during the night.
"Often he coughs and he needs to have his saliva wiped or he needs to be repositioned because he has flopped over," explains a statement prepared by his solicitor Bindmans.
Now, of course, awareness of this guy's condition does nothing to solve our own problems... but I think it puts everything into perspective
After reading his tragic story, I realised that actually my problems really aren't so bad after all...
