Aging Parents and the Dilemma of Assisted Suicide

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Man Up Man Down podcast presented by Volker Ballueder and David Pawsey. We discuss the pressures and challenges faced by men approaching middle age that we're often too embarrassed to speak about with our friends. You can find us online at www.manupdown.com.

[00:00:26] Enjoy the show and don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. Hello and welcome to another episode of Man Up Man Down. So I'm delighted to welcome Justin Campbell to our podcast today. So Justin has been a friend for many years.

[00:00:47] He's officially, if I say officially, he's the co-founder of Sage Source, especially Speed to Be Pipeline Management Agency as well as a host of the Future Fast Digital Marketing Podcast where I have been featured on actually as well.

[00:01:00] He has over 20 years of Speed to Be Sage experience working with the likes of American Express, Yamaha Universal Pictures, Volvo and SAP. He's a serial entrepreneur co-founding two successful agencies as well as investing capital expertise in several startups.

[00:01:16] His expertise lies in B2B sales outreach, content marketing and sales enablement. He also last weekend finished a time of recording I have to say and finished the London Marathon so congratulations on that Justin.

[00:01:30] And today we're speaking about ailing parents and maybe about assisted suicide as well depending you know which direction the podcast goes. But first of all Justin, welcome to our podcast. Brilliant. Hi Volk, hi David. Thanks so very much for letting me come on your show.

[00:01:47] Now it's great to have you and I have to apologize for my voice. I'm a bit hoarse. Nothing to do with smoking. So not like you Justin, right? Your voice is a bit hoarse because of smoking.

[00:01:59] So Justin, do we want to start with you giving us a bit of an intro of who you are and what you do because you're British living in the Netherlands. And how did you end up there?

[00:02:10] Yeah well first of all Volker I quite like the Husky Boys today. I think it's going to go down the ring a little bit. It's going to sound good to me.

[00:02:17] So I'm like you in a way Volker but you're a German living a very long time in the UK and I'm an Englishman living a very long time in the Netherlands. So I worked in sales in London and the team there said we're going to open an office

[00:02:34] in Amsterdam. It was from a company called S3 which is a pretty hardcore sales company where we had to make like 100 phone calls a day and set advertising. And they said we're opening an office in Amsterdam. We need some people to go there who wants to go.

[00:02:47] And I immediately shot my hand up even though I've never been to the Netherlands before because I really wanted to get out of London. It wasn't for me. I arrived in Amsterdam and that was it really.

[00:02:58] I've been living in mainland Europe I think for about 15 years now it certainly feels like that long and also three years in Berlin as well in that time. What's life of Berlin at Amsterdam? Oh they're both very different. I miss Berlin dearly.

[00:03:16] I mean I'm not going to, I absolutely love Berlin. There's something about that place which is just amazing. However Dutch towns and cities are very cozy and I think Berlin is an amazing city but one of the downsides is quite large. It's quite cold at times.

[00:03:34] Sorry we're digressing already, we haven't even started yet. So tell us more about if I see Ealing parents. You have a dad who has dementia I believe. He's got Parkinson's disease. Yeah. So while we're looking at guys, first of all congratulations on doing Man Up, Man Down.

[00:03:53] I've listened to several shows and I think it's a really good initiative because it just reminds me if every year a couple of my mates who get together like maybe three or four maybe even six of us and we go on a hike

[00:04:07] and we just get these middle-aged men together to go on a hike and talk and walk and we do that for three days and we do that every year and we can do it for the past seven years now.

[00:04:15] So it certainly feels like this is the podcast version of that. So congrats on the podcast. Thank you. So let me give you a little bit of background. So my parents are both profoundly deaf. They met on a deaf organized skiing holiday when they were young

[00:04:32] and they quickly fell in love and bought a house had me and my brother and that's sort of something that happened in the 80s, right? So my parents can't hear anything. I was brought up with deaf parents and I learned to sign from a very, very young age.

[00:04:48] My brother always say that he's a better signer than I am. He picks up sign language a lot better than I did. But we lived in a really split world because we lived in something called the deaf world and the hearing world.

[00:04:59] And we have an interesting family dynamic because we're basically the eyes and ears, sorry, the ears of our parents. So it's an interesting dynamic and I think only a sort of a hearing child from deaf parents can ever really truly explain what that dynamic is.

[00:05:17] So we've always looked after them in a way as well as they, you know, brought us up and they looked after us. So with Daglet diagnosed with Parkinson's disease about 10 years ago, he's had it for a very long time and he probably had it a little bit

[00:05:31] before he was diagnosed. So he's been a long term sufferer and he's been on medication for quite some time as well. My mum suffers from anxiety issues and that's something that's historical, some unfortunate things that happen during her youth.

[00:05:48] So we've got a bit of an interesting situation at home there with my dad suffering from Parkinson's disease now in pretty advanced stages. And my mum suffers from anxiety issues and she's been looking after him basically for all this time. Yeah, so that's the background on our situation.

[00:06:05] So do your parents live in the Netherlands as well then? Or are they in the UK? They're actually in the UK. Yeah, so they live just outside Luton in a nice little village called Barton Lee Clay. So that's challenging as well.

[00:06:19] So, you know, communicating and then going over there to help out is a challenge as well. And my brother's relatively close by too, but he's also got two young daughters. I've got two young daughters. So, yeah, it's a real challenge. It's a juggling act.

[00:06:39] We try and be there as much as possible. Luckily, we've managed to find some carers to help. Right? So I'm sure that there'll be people listening to the podcast that are in that stage where parents are getting to an age where,

[00:06:52] you know, you want to live your life, but you also want to be there to help. And one of the best options is to get to care and support and try and bring people in. Were they how open were they to that?

[00:07:06] Because sort of thinking, you know, from my experience where I mean, my dad sort of reluctantly agreed to have someone come in like once a week and, you know, we would have liked him to have had, you know, someone coming in more often, you know, mainly just

[00:07:26] to check on him as opposed to, you know, the house needing a clean. So, yeah, I mean, were they sort of quite open to it? Or, you know, did they recognise the need to have carers or, you know, was that, you know, a sort of a challenge?

[00:07:42] That's a great question, David. So, I mean, you've been there as well. It sounds like, well, you try and help your parents, but your parents still see you as being their children. You know, you might be 40 going grey with a beard,

[00:07:56] but they still see this little kid standing in front of them. I think and they're difficult for parents to let that go because it's difficult for them to hear, you know, their kid telling them what they should be doing. It should be the other way around.

[00:08:09] My mum was very resistant, actually. I think that's got a lot to do with the anxiety issues that she has. It was compounded by that. But it was a really interesting situation is that she was complaining the whole time that she had to look after my dad.

[00:08:28] And then I said, well, you've got to do something about it. And then the resistance came. She's like, oh, no, it's not that bad. It's not really too much for an issue. And you're like, come on, mum. You know, let's be honest, it is.

[00:08:40] We were really fortunate to find some private carers nearby that we found through sort of networking in Village. But the sort of NHS support and let's say the support that's available at the moment in the UK, it's pretty diabolic. Right. It's pretty shambolic.

[00:08:58] So we were really lucky to get some private carers. Yeah. What is the situation? I mean, I have to admit, because my parents are in Germany, me and my parents don't need care yet. I have no idea what it looks like.

[00:09:10] I mean, my mother-in-law needs care and she gets the care she needs. So what is it? You know, what's the situation? And if I say from your point of view about the NHS. It's pretty shambolic. I mean, I know that some sort of counties are better than others.

[00:09:27] But a lot of it is means tested. So if you have a certain amount of savings in your account, you can't get access to free care. The sum of the press and media have gone to town on some of the elder care like people coming into people's homes

[00:09:43] and stealing stuff and bailing mail, for example, just an assay horrendous of those sorts of stories. And that scares the elderly off, which doesn't really help the situation either. But yeah, we would try to get local support. But the you've got a few options. They're very limited.

[00:10:02] And one of those one of those options, unfortunately, is basically going into a care home. But a lot of those towns are full. So you'd be waiting to get into those care homes. And then maybe you can get some assistance at home. But it's pretty, pretty sporadic, unfortunately.

[00:10:17] So I do know for a fact that there will be, you know, agencies out there as well, but they can be incredibly expensive to use those agencies. We we did look into having like live in care for a bit.

[00:10:30] Somebody stays in the house for you there the whole time. But you'd very quickly go through your life savings if you if you weren't down that route, to be honest. Yeah. I was about to ask how much are we looking at?

[00:10:44] I mean, are you happy to disclose it? I mean, I don't know idea how much you have to pay. Well, I mean, I'd need to look through all the emails, but we went I spoke to six or seven different living care companies.

[00:10:55] I think it's something about like was around four thousand pounds a month. Well, and was that for care or a care home? Live in cares. So living right. Because yeah, I mean, again, sort of, I know from my or my granddad's experience.

[00:11:13] But, you know, yeah, going into a care home, it's suddenly the money is just being sucked up, which I don't know. You know, it almost sounds like mercenary because it's all well, you know, that's my inheritance.

[00:11:26] But, you know, it's I think it's more like the amount of money that they take and you sort of see the. They're still living in a very they're not living in a comfortable state. It's, you know, almost me for my granddad.

[00:11:42] It sort of felt like, you know, he sort of didn't have his own space. You know, it wasn't the lounge that had been used to and he was always a very particular man, you know, so if I don't know, like a glass was put in the wrong place,

[00:12:00] he'd just find that really frustrating. And I guess when you like, if you're paying, if you paid that in a hotel, you know, he'd expect quite a good service for for well, actually four grand a month in a hotel. That's quite cheap. But yeah, you know, it's

[00:12:17] this is a look here at a school goat. Care home prices and they say weekly fee for permanent residents receiving standard care between one thousand one hundred and one thousand three hundred. Yeah, who's that's about right? Yeah, yeah. Or four to six grand really. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:34] I mean, this is I'm glad you brought up about that, David. So my Nan, she was fit as a fiddle. She had one glass champagne in her whole life, probably. She lived to the ripe old age of eighty four. She was a war baby, right?

[00:12:48] So during Second World War, she was very small when it all finished. You know, like she's been through it and and very fortunate to marry my grandfather, who was pretty smart guy, sold a lot of motorbikes. He sold a moped to Cliff Richard.

[00:13:02] And he was one of the first people to start selling Yamaha motorcycles in the UK after the Second World War. Right. So Japanese brand and people are like all bit frowned upon that a little bit. He was one of the first people to run Yamaha motorbike sales shop.

[00:13:19] And, you know, she married him. He built a house. She had an amazing life. He lived a great life. He died, unfortunately, very young. She lived a widow for the rest of her life. She was incredibly independent. The last year of her life, she went downhill.

[00:13:34] Unfortunately, she aged really, really quickly. She had a heart condition. She had trouble walking. And then she ended up in a care home in the last year of her life, but it wasn't an official care home because they were full.

[00:13:46] She ended up in sort of a bit like a half way home sort of place. It's quite small. And then she she spent the last year of her life there and she wasn't very happy.

[00:13:57] And we used to go visit her a lot and try and cheer her up. But you could tell she was absolutely miserable. And then, you know, aside to ask myself a lot of questions as well, it's like, would you would you want that for yourself?

[00:14:12] Would you want that for your parents? You know, at such a late stage stage in life. Yeah, which this really sort of segues into this topic in discussion of like assisted suicide, right? Because, you know, we all know we're going to go.

[00:14:29] And this may be a bit of a morbid podcast today. But we all know where we're all going to go. Shouldn't people have the right to choose when that happens? So they don't get into these situations which ultimately made them really unhappy and it's not really

[00:14:44] not really the icing on the cake after he's had an amazing. Do you know what I mean? Well, that is a morbid topic, literally. I mean, 15 minutes into the podcast, you managed to mention the war and we talk about assisted suicide.

[00:14:58] I think that's the first, to be honest. I love it. Hello, it's Volker here. I hope you enjoy this episode. You might not realize that I have been coaching for almost a decade through both third parties and private clients.

[00:15:13] During the time I've worked with brands such as General Electric, Imperial Brands, DHL and Pepsi. However, this year, I'm putting a big emphasis on growing my private coaching practice, improving lights of middle aged men in leadership positions.

[00:15:30] So if you hit midlife transition point and you might be a bit stuck or looking to improve your work-life balance, your career or productivity, you want to build a new habit where you just want to become a better version of yourself. Please hit me up.

[00:15:46] You can reach me on Volker.natos. That's Volker at OBNAT.US or LinkedIn, whatever is easiest. Thanks and now back to the episode. That's a big topic, right? Because I think the question is, and as you would know,

[00:16:06] I'm sure there's a lot of discussion going on in the UK at the moment. And I wouldn't be surprised if we get a new government that, you know, the law might change in the UK. Which then the question is, is that what's the majority wants?

[00:16:20] I don't know. Who can make that decision? Right? Can you, when you're, I don't know, 84, 85, like your grandmother, still make that decision going like, oh yeah, I'm going down here now. I'd rather die. Yeah, that's a big question, right? There's a big question, yeah.

[00:16:41] Yeah, I'm really keen to talk about it and I think it's a difficult subject and I know a lot of people don't want to talk about it and they find it very difficult. But let's just frame it.

[00:16:52] I think we definitely, I mean, I can't vote in the Netherlands so I'm happy to talk about UK politics. We're definitely going to get a Labour government in the next election, right? Then Keir Starmer is definitely going to bring this to the House, come to a vote.

[00:17:06] And if you ask me, it needs to happen sooner rather than later. So, you know, I've done a lot of reading, I've done a lot of research on this and I've listened to a lot of podcasts and I just like say there are not enough podcasts,

[00:17:17] there are certainly multiple podcasts about assisted suicide. There's only a handful and a lot of them are based in the US. Assisted suicide is legal, and that's a bit of a fact check, right? It's legal in Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg

[00:17:33] and of course, Switzerland, which is the most famous. So, the Netherlands as well, I didn't know. Yeah, and I'll give some really interesting stats on the Netherlands shortly. Canada and some US states and most Australian states also have legalised assisted suicide,

[00:17:54] which I like to call dying with dignity, which is the name of the American Bill. And recently, I think it was maybe within a year. Well, I have to check the dates, but New Zealand had two votes on one day.

[00:18:11] The legalisation of cannabis and the legalisation of assisted suicide. They didn't vote for the legalisation, that didn't pass, right? The public voted against the legalisation of cannabis, but they did vote for East Asia Bill in New Zealand. It just goes to show like how people

[00:18:35] in a pretty conservative country, which is Zealand is at times, how important they thought it was to you to vote that through. Interesting. So what are the stats on the Netherlands? I didn't know you could you could do that in the Netherlands as well.

[00:18:51] In the Netherlands, it's I wouldn't say I think popular is the wrong word. It's becoming increasingly popular to end your life. It's like just influence a trend. Assisted suicide is trending. Yeah, well, it's one in eight people in the Netherlands and their lives in a legal way.

[00:19:16] So I mean, do I mean, I remember, you know, this is obviously a good 30 years ago, if not more. I remember like writing an essay or doing a speech like at school. You know, I had to do a debate and basically I chose euthanasia euthanasia.

[00:19:36] And, you know, and I remember sort of one of the things was that, you know, you have to write a living will. And, you know, it's obviously you you'd say when I get to this point, and if my health deteriorated

[00:19:51] deteriorated to this point, then I would elect to to die with dignity. I mean, so what are, you know, what is the process and procedures? And because I know that there was one one case that I read about where it was

[00:20:10] of, you know, basically, again, I don't know the phrasing, but someone was granted permission for like severe mental health of severe depression, essentially. So I mean, from your research, do you know what, you know, if different countries have different, you know, levels or criteria

[00:20:31] and, you know, how much of it has to be preplanned? You know, what is the point? And it's like, well, actually, are they capable of making that decision themselves? Yeah, yeah. This is this is the big one, isn't it?

[00:20:45] Right. So what are the what are the conditions and and it varies in different countries? Yeah, I read that as well. There was there was a case in the Netherlands or might be the same story you were talking about or similar.

[00:20:58] But there was a case in the Netherlands where there was a lady I believe and she'd suffered very long, long term from from severe depression. And the terminology in the Netherlands is that you have no prospect of having an improving life state, right?

[00:21:14] That you, you know, that whatever you do, it's not going to get better. And in that case, I said, they questioned it. Some people questioned it and some people, I think, even managed

[00:21:24] to try and take that one to court and check it out that she just tried everything. And it wasn't it wasn't her state wasn't improving. So she went through a lot of interview processes, I'm sure. I think in the Netherlands, you have to go through quite a

[00:21:39] rigid process. You have to be compass mentors. There was a believer Dutch pro athlete who was at least very young like dementia problems. And he unfortunately couldn't go through that process of assisted suicide because he couldn't. He wasn't compass mentors anymore. And he couldn't communicate properly anymore.

[00:22:02] So he ended up, I don't know if he's actually still alive. But that's that's the challenging one, right? You've got to be able to say, I don't want to go on anymore. There's also this idea of power of attorney as well, right?

[00:22:15] So you might have power of attorney over someone. And I think that's going to be a problem in in English law is that you can have power of attorney over someone's care and health. And that's things like turning off life support.

[00:22:31] That will also have to be looked at in terms of assisted suicide. That's a really, really, really tricky one. But in the Netherlands, you really do have to give consent and it's not an easy process and it has to be done by.

[00:22:48] I think you have to do it. You have to do it of course, do it yourself. It's you have to press the button yourself or it can be administered by a doctor. We need to do we need to get a bit of a fact check there.

[00:23:00] But you yeah, you have to be able to do it yourself and have to be in control. So for all I see in the press, and I don't really follow it in detail is people taking their partner to Switzerland or their parents to Switzerland.

[00:23:17] And I don't know what it's like in Switzerland, right? Law wise, but it feels to me like, oh, yeah, we we taking them there and be pressed a button on their behalf. So that's the case then. In Switzerland, they this dignity test, right?

[00:23:31] It's this company which is by guessing must be sort of part owned by the government. I'm not entirely sure, but it only seems to be one company, Dick and Sass, you go there and you can end your life. And then someone can do it for you as well.

[00:23:49] And that could be at any stage of your life. There's no rule. Famously, there was an English couple. They were in their forties. There was nothing wrong with them. You know, it's what in very commerce, nothing wrong with them. They both went to Switzerland.

[00:24:03] They both ended their lives in Switzerland. Yeah. And, you know, David, you'll be familiar with the name Esther Anson, right? Maybe Volcker. You might also be Esther Anson, really famous journalist, TV presenter from like the 80s and 90s. She presented a famously presented program called That's Life.

[00:24:25] And she's been diagnosed with having lung cancer. It's incurable. She never smoked, by the way, but she's got lung cancer. Incurable. And she's a trailblazer, right? She's also a campaigner. And she's also campaigning for like the choice of assisted

[00:24:40] suicide in the UK because she's actually said I'm going to Switzerland and I don't want to. And I want to be at home in my bed with my family around me. And I don't want to go to Switzerland. But yeah, Switzerland's the place to go.

[00:24:54] That's I find quite concerning, right? So you can. So if I decided tomorrow I don't want to live anymore. I can go to Switzerland. Hi, darling. I'm going to Switzerland. Yeah, you just thought it was a little bit. It's just going to be like, I don't know.

[00:25:09] It's almost like, yeah, we have to take the dog to a farm. It's like, oh, yeah, I had to take my parents to Switzerland. That's all right. It's like being a bit glib. No, no, no, no, you're not being glib.

[00:25:18] I'm glad that you're you're bringing out of the mood, David, because normally I'm quite joyful, sort of jokey sort of person. But yeah, I must say my doctor's ex is at A. Man Up, Man Down is sponsored by Well-Doing.

[00:25:31] There's someone who has seen a counsellor for a number of years. I think their approach is great. They want you to find the mental health professional who is right for you. You can feel to your search to highlight therapists with expertise where you need it,

[00:25:42] or you can pay to use their personalised matching service. The people who run Well-Doing are experts in mental wellbeing. And they also have loads of posts and interviews to keep your mental health in good shape. Take a look at welldoing.org.

[00:25:57] I find it crazy that you can just... Obviously, there's no law and we had that in another podcast where we discussed that the word commits suicide comes from. You know, it used to be crime, took a bit of crime, right?

[00:26:09] Until 1960s or so, it was a crime to take your life. Well, they're easy in Russia. Yeah, I mean, UK used to be like that. And so what you're saying is in Switzerland, I don't even need to have any physical mental problems or whatever.

[00:26:28] I can just take my own life, which you can of course do with the UK or any other country as well. I'm not encouraging anyone here, but you can do it, right? But you can do it there almost legally.

[00:26:39] As David said, you can go on the farm and do it rather than throw yourself in front of a train or something else. Yeah. But it doesn't sit right with me. I mean, I personally, it is such a few subject, right?

[00:26:53] Because I can understand it that if you, I don't know, as you said, right? There's this famous person that had lung cancer or someone who's really old and goes downhill and you have lots of pain or your cancer is growing and so on.

[00:27:11] And you go like, what's the point? What's my point of being alive anymore? And I can see how then someone would say, okay, I end my life. I decide to end my life and rather than me jumping in front of a train,

[00:27:25] right, or off a bridge or whatever, I'm doing that with dignity. I'm going to dignitas or wherever I'm gonna go. I'm going there and do it with dignity, right? I do it, so I get that. Like concept-wise, I get it.

[00:27:40] I don't know what I would be like in that situation. Yeah. Because as a Buddhist, you don't believe in suicide, right? Because you just, as far as I understand Buddhism, if you take your life, you go back to the suffering over and over again, right? It's yeah.

[00:27:55] And I'm really pleased that you brought up that point because I think faith has got a lot to do with it. So I'm really pleased you brought up that point. So I've been also been practicing Buddhism for like many years, Nitshirin Buddhism.

[00:28:10] And I have to say, like it is one of my biggest qualms I do have with religions because I'm like pretty spiritual myself. I do a lot of meditation. I go to many Buddhist meetings that do identify with being, you know, Buddhist myself.

[00:28:31] And there are many forms of Buddhism, right? You know, Zen, what have you. And this is the Nitshirin originally from Japan. But it does say that it is not okay to take your life. And one thing I've liked about certain kinds of Buddhism

[00:28:49] is that they kind of do try and, you know, evolve. And a lot of the Anglican movement lay in terms of the church, they're embracing it. I think the Catholic church and my family background is Catholic. I think they have a big problem with it.

[00:29:05] It seems to have a problem with everything. And so he's already Catholics out there, but, you know, it doesn't make sense because there's a boy, he's in his twenties, he's an aspiring rugby player. He goes into a scrum.

[00:29:21] His neck is broken in the scrum and he's a paraplegic. His life ahead of him is gonna be massively different. He's suffering a huge amount. He doesn't wanna go on anymore. His parents, I think this is in the UK and then if it's happened or not

[00:29:38] but definitely saw something being spoken about in the news, his parents are like, he doesn't wanna go on anymore. We have to go to Switzerland, right? That is a pure form of suffering. He is awful, but surely he has to have the choice. And I'm gonna finish here

[00:29:59] and let David say something if he wants to. But one of the issues that we have in this modern world and where the groundings of religion didn't have this, let's say hundreds or thousands of years ago, is with modern technology in science,

[00:30:16] doctors and scientists have become very, very good at helping us live longer. So we have this amazing world of science and medication and everything like that. The Alps just live longer, helps us fight disease. But there is, that's the yin, right?

[00:30:30] There's no yang, there's no opposite to that. So my dad, has got Parkinson's disease. He takes 17 different pills a day. His life expectancy is extended and this quality of life is improved. But it's gonna come to a point where he's taking so many drugs

[00:30:47] that actually it doesn't bring him anything anymore and he's, eventually Parkinson's probably will take his life but there'll be a stage where he's probably gonna say, I've had enough, I'm off. But he's had so many drugs, it's gonna continue his life of suffering.

[00:31:04] So yeah, I don't know what you think about that David? I mean, I guess sort of coming at it from a slightly different angle, possibly an even more pessimistic dark angle. I mean to my dad, I mean until he was about 80, I mean so he died last March.

[00:31:25] So you know, we're sort of, well I think he would have been around this time that we had his funeral. So kind of getting all those like, you know those reminders coming up at the moment. But he sort of had a fall about a year before the pandemic

[00:31:42] but he basically lived on his own. It was at my sister's when he had the fall over Christmas and so we sort of went down there, moved his bed downstairs and that's sort of when we had to get like carers in.

[00:31:56] And I mean, he was very hard of hearing. He lost, well he wasn't blind but he was partially sighted but essentially he couldn't really watch or listen to the TV. You know, he had a really isolated existence. Then we had the pandemic

[00:32:16] and neither me nor my sister live. We were both two hours drive away. You know, I sort of think, I don't know how he does it. You know, because you know, there's been times where I'm like, I've you know, oh I've had two days

[00:32:31] and I'm not really seen anyone I've just been sat in my office. You know, and it's like, I need to go out and I'm not, I wouldn't say that I'm someone that needs to have lots of people around me to thrive.

[00:32:43] You know, I do like my own company but you know, I get, I'm very mindful of when I'm missing human company and how that affects my mood. And you know, I just sort of, I don't know how dad did it.

[00:32:58] And you know, I'm like, if I was in that position, what would I do? You know, what would keep me going? And you know, and I'm jumping about a bit. And so you know, we sort of focus saying, well you know,

[00:33:10] why go to Switzerland rather than just jumping in front of a bus? And you know, and I often sort of think, well, you know, if guns are more accessible, if guns were as accessible in the UK as they are in America, will we see higher rates of suicide?

[00:33:27] Because to me that's almost- So essentially with younger people, yeah, because in the UK, most suicides are among young men, right? And that numbers on the rise. But what we're, I think the tricky word here is suicide. What we're talking about here is the death with dignity. You're-

[00:33:49] Yeah, I mean- You're in your life. Yeah, I mean, I guess what I'm saying is, you know, it felt like dad had sort of got to a point in his existence where, yeah, I almost feel if that was me, I might say to my children, you know,

[00:34:09] I don't, well, it might be a conversation but I start, shall we say. Can I jump in there because, have you guys ever discussed that with your parents? I mean, I haven't yet, but, you know, as to say my parents are, you know,

[00:34:27] touch wood, they're healthy and all for the age. But can you, you know, Dave, you're just saying, I'm at an age now, I wanna talk to my kids about it. You might not be able to talk to your kids about it anymore, right? Yeah.

[00:34:45] Whatever you might have, right? Hopefully nothing, right? And maybe you can still talk to them but then you don't have a reason to talk to them because you don't wanna take your own life. But what if you can't talk to them anymore because your disease eats you up,

[00:35:00] you can't speak, you can't, you know, whatever. You're literally a, so the German word is a Fliegerfall, right? You know, you're literally there in bed, can't do anything. You're a vist, yeah. Yeah. Then what do you gotta do? And it will make that decision. Is it your turn?

[00:35:19] Well, this is why the law needs to change well, I think this is the point actually. So I say to my wife, like, when I get old and necessarily just, I'm lucky enough to fall down dead or go to sleep and not wake up again,

[00:35:37] I'm off, you know, I don't wanna have that. I've seen it before and I don't want it to happen to me and also one of my best friends or probably my best ever friend, his mom had Parkinson's disease and she really suffered, not Parkinson's,

[00:35:54] excuse me, Huntington's, she really suffered at the end. And I think this is an amazing point, Volker, and the law needs to change so you could say some of the US laws are pretty good. So the US state law details that the life expectancy

[00:36:11] of someone should be less than six months. So you could say, if my life expectancy is really bad and I am a vegetable, I give you the authority to end my life. That's the euthanasia bit, right? This is kind of like euthanasia 2.0 where we're at in the UK

[00:36:35] because they haven't even started discussing it in Parliament yet. It would be, you'd have to do it yourself. You still have to be compass-mentus to say, I wanna go. Because what about, you mentioned there's a rugby player, right, breaking his neck, right? Yeah.

[00:36:53] Let's say, of course for a bit, you have a motorcycle accident tomorrow or a car accident doesn't have to be a motorcycle accident, right? And you become a vegetable, right? And your daughters, your children are still there, right? Would you want your wife to turn the machines off?

[00:37:14] Or if you have a chance of a life, like Stephen Hawkins, right? Let's use him as an example. His brain was working but he was a vegetable, right? And he was still a very smart man. I mean, not that I read many of his books or, you know,

[00:37:31] he clearly didn't believe in God because, you know, it's like who gives anyone the right to decide, or, you know, Stephen, you might be a brain, you might be a genius, right? But look, you're vegetable. You know, I can't be bothered, you know, taking care of you.

[00:37:48] You know, I'd rather turn off your machines and off you go. Because I mean, he, as far as I know, right, he had a second wife just before he died. The thing is, yeah, you've got to make that choice.

[00:38:00] And the guy who broke his neck in the rugby scrum, he's still convinced, meant to say, I don't want to do it anymore. It's my choice. I'm off, right? Off to the next life or heaven or whatever you believe in. Think this is the king.

[00:38:17] This is the thing. No one has been given the choice. I want to pull up one more stat. I hope we've got enough time because I think- Yeah, go for it. This really summarizes it for me. So they did a massive study in the Netherlands

[00:38:32] as to why, and these were the people that were considering to leave this earth and why they were going to do it. And the number one reason why they didn't want to go on anymore is loss of autonomy. 97% people, certain loss of autonomy

[00:38:52] because they didn't want to be a hindrance. They didn't want to be a pain in the ass. They couldn't watch TV anymore. They couldn't have fun anymore. They had had enough. And not even pain, like pain and discomfort was in the top five reasons to end your life

[00:39:13] because people would think, oh, you're in loads of pain. You want to go? No, it's autonomy. I mean, this is very, very minor example, but as listeners will know, I've been recovering from a nasty ankle injury over the last sort of 10 weeks.

[00:39:33] And I hope my insurer is not listening, but I've just started driving again. I was gonna say Dave, an ankle injury, stuff, good enough for an easy to get. But no, I mean, for what I was gonna say is,

[00:39:47] I've literally had six weeks of lying on the sofa. I mean, at first it was like, I had to get everything brought to me, but it's sort of been that ability to go wherever I want whenever I want. And so it's like on a normal day,

[00:40:06] I'll be like, right, I'm going into the desk, the office with the desk space I've got. Then I'm gonna go for a swim. Oh, and then I need to get my haircut. And it's like, right, well, if I'm asking my wife,

[00:40:19] it's like, I'm gonna have to choose one of those things. I've either got to go for a swim or go to the office, because she can't be on hand to then take me to all those places. And that, I guess that was the bit that,

[00:40:34] well, that's the bit that I found hardest that I can't. Well, as I say in the very early days, if someone brought me a drink and it's just out of reach, it's like, come back, I can't get my drink.

[00:40:46] And I was thinking, a lot of the time I was thinking, oh my God, is this how my dad was almost, and his last days where, I mean, I'd sort of have to break my day up as in, I'd have to like hop slash use the crutches

[00:41:05] to get downstairs. So it's almost like, right, well, I'll go downstairs and I'll spend a few hours in this room. And then the effort of getting then getting to another room is like, right, well, I'll spend the next few hours here. And I just sort of thought, well,

[00:41:21] if dad dropped something on the floor that he couldn't find, was that the sort of slow existence he was going through? But, I mean, it sort of like, yeah, it was a huge eye opener for me. It's like, wow, this is kind of what?

[00:41:37] It was an insight into getting old and losing your bodily functions are one of a better words that you take for granted. This is what boy and I would like to make, and I know we're running out of time, as we always do when it gets really interesting.

[00:41:55] We mainly talked, and you just said it, right? About bodily harm, bodily harm, bodily or physical illness, right? What about mental illness and how can you judge that? So if someone, I don't know, is depressed? Well, I mean, that's the example that we were talking about earlier was,

[00:42:16] oh, but I mean, and I think the other thing actually that I was gonna mention is sort of, you know, with this lad, so how old was he? The rugby player? Hi, we're being his 20s. Right, right. But I mean, I was reading something the other day,

[00:42:31] can't remember its name, but it was basically someone that had had something happen to them very early in life, and they were paralyzed, but they had to live in this like chamber. Oh yeah, the guy with the iron lung. That was it. The story, yeah, incredible story.

[00:42:47] But he was like a doctor of this, you know, PhD in that, he'd basically accomplished so much. Yeah. And you know, and it's almost like, all right, well, you get someone like that where it's like, well, I can't move, but I can still do this. Yeah.

[00:43:05] And then, and I'm not saying that, well, that's a lot more admirable, and someone that doesn't have that attitude, then they're a failure, but you know, it is kind of, one person can suffer a severe trauma and it's the making of them,

[00:43:20] and you know, someone else can suffer a severe trauma and it's the end of them. Well yeah, again, it comes down to a choice. So I think that's an incredible story. I do believe that guy in America had polio.

[00:43:31] And then, yeah, he then had to go into an iron lung and this amazing engineer, smash doctor built this incredible iron lung for him. I think towards the, he got married a couple of times as well. He was also a bit of a lady killer.

[00:43:45] If I'm not wrong, Lady killer, there we go. And then he, but one thing that's amazing about his story is that he did manage to spend more and more time outside of the lung. I wrote, you know, he went out and stuff,

[00:43:59] but he would always have to return to it at some point. But yeah, and there's also, there's a guy, is it's Saracens rugby and same thing happens in Broke's neck, unfortunately paralyzed, but very much involved in the club. And there's a documentary about him and everything as well.

[00:44:17] But it comes down to choice, right? So you can gift the world a choice to take medication or they can deny medication or they can deny operation or they can have an operation. And I think that with an aging population that is increasingly lonely,

[00:44:39] a lot of old people now live in these big old houses or on their own, especially say the baby doing this as they get older and older and older, that's gonna happen more and more and more. Gotta be a choice there. Yeah, definitely.

[00:44:53] Looking a little bit at the time. Unfortunately we have to wrap it up here, don't we? David, you're looking at me, you're like, you wanna say, I think David wants to say, we have a few back because we need to discuss the topic again. And then we're out.

[00:45:09] I think it's- And it's this one where we've, well, we could have talked about lots of things and we've scratched the surface but- Exactly. I mean, it's sort of interesting that you said that you've sort of done a lot of research

[00:45:23] and it's not discussed as much as perhaps it should. And it's a huge discussion, it's just incest, right? I mean, our generation, we as a midlife first, right? We have to deal with that at some moment, right? Because our parents are in their 80s, in their 90s.

[00:45:40] And if they say they're ready to move on or whatever you believe in. And with the changing law, we need to have an opinion. I think every one of us needs to have an opinion similar to, I was thinking about that earlier about abortion, right?

[00:45:58] Everyone needs to have an opinion on abortion, right? Whether it's- Which is probably a topic for another day. So thanks for bringing that, if I say to the pot, Justin. And maybe we need to have people come back or get more experts in because I think it's a,

[00:46:13] it's literally a hot topic. And as the government is changing, hopefully, this year, we're gonna see more of those discussions. So thank you for coming on. Thank you so much. Yeah, please do get in some experts in. I mean, I'm just a Gonzo philosopher, right?

[00:46:29] So tell you, listen to anything I say. But I do think it needs to be discussed more. I think the quote from Benjamin Franklin was, there's only two certainties in life and that's death and taxes. So we don't talk about death nearly as much as we should

[00:46:44] because everybody ends up there. Even Elon Musk one day will leave this earth. And no matter how badly he tries. But he might go to Mars, so you never know. He might leave the earth. He might not die on Mars. Which is kind of, that's his choice, right?

[00:47:00] If he wants to go there and die there, that's his choice. But there is just one last thing I'd like to say to listeners is if you haven't seen it yet, there is an absolutely brilliant documentary from Louis Theroux where he follows,

[00:47:12] I think three different people on their journeys to choosing when to go. And it's in the States, right? It's in America and it's very different the way they do it. But it's all a choice and they all went in their own homes and it's very, very sad.

[00:47:28] Like one of the guys is a legend and he's had cancer and he's just an amazing guy and you really start to like him as the documentary goes on. You know, when spoil happens in there, but do you watch it? Because it's really eye-opening

[00:47:40] and then yeah, it's some beautiful stories at the end of the day. Okay, perfect. And if any of our listeners want to get in touch with you, Justin, how can they find you? Good old LinkedIn, right? Just type in Justin Campbell, sale source.

[00:47:59] And I'm sure you'll find me. Thanks very much. Thank you, Justin. Thanks so much guys, really enjoyed that, thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's episode. Feel free to reach out to Folka or David via our website, www.manupdown.com or podcast at manupdown.com

[00:48:20] with any feedback or to let us know what topics you'd like us to cover in the future. Hear you again soon.