From multiple personal experiences, including both of my parents, dementia is a slow, horrible death where you are robbed of your dignity and end up dragging all of your relatives through a very long, very torturous hell. You will be drooling, pissing, and shitting yourself, all while slowly reverting back to a low IQ childhood mentality where you're very likely to have outbursts and verbally or physically attack the people around you. Your loved ones will be tormented, and if you don't have loved ones then if you're lucky you'll be tossed into a room and forgotten about by underpaid, overworked staff at some run-down nursing home. If you're not lucky you'll be laying in a gutter on the street until you die.

Interestingly my wife helped a friend whose father had the disease during the pandemic.

He had worked as a professor and after retirement had suffered with AD for years but had stayed "independent" because his wife was high functioning mentally but low functioning physically and formed a good team.

He'd bought long term care insurance so he had the resources to afford both a room at a care home but also personal help from home aides, including my wife. He didn't really know what was going on most of the time but he never got angry or flustered and was always pleasant to deal with.

We had trouble with certain homes having a way they want to do things or requiring things that weren't really necessary, one insisted that he get a pacemaker because he had bradycardia. When he lived with his son between homes probably the most difficult thing was that he got up in the night to use the bathroom and would end up urinating in the wrong place. He got much better care than many residents because people were always coming around to see him and the staff knew that we cared and would advocate for him.

He passed away at 92 and outlived many of the people who knew him at work so he had just a small memorial ceremony. I saw it as an example of healthy aging and talked about it a lot with my wife -- and it made me think about myself and my own fear that my ability to compensate for my schizotaxia may degrade when my brain degrades and I can picture myself becoming really nasty and it gives me all the more incentive to rewrite my habits while I still can.

Sadly, cancer isn’t one singular disease. Types of cancer can be excruciatingly painful for many years, which is also tormenting to everyone around you. I wouldn’t wish either on anyone.