MovieChat Forums > Still Alice (2015) Discussion > What would your plan be?

What would your plan be?

posted 10 years ago by MaximusXXX
13 replies | jump to latest

Alice's oldest daughter knows she's going to have the same thing happen to her so she can plan accordingly. Obviously it's not a fine timeline but you'd think she would plan for it to hit her 50s onwards.

I heard a story about a man trying to deal with it on his own by having signs all over his house, like for the washroom, where to put things down, time he would get food dropped off, etc. Too bad I couldn't find any articles but this was in the early 90s. Apparently the man was able to care for himself until the disease became more debilitating (like forgetting where he was or basic spelling).

I thought it was fairly interesting and certainly makes some sense considering how it can be managed in the early stages.

In the film, Alice plans for a suicide option, but she does so rather poorly. If you wanted to do something like that I feel it would work best to carry a capsule around your neck and leave many, MANY clues to yourself about opening the compartment, etc. Essentially you'd avoid doing it while you felt you still had some control.

Destination: Rad-City

[–] ciprianl 10 years ago

Clues can fail, regardless of their number, if one reaches a stage of lacking the ability to interpret or act upon them. And in the case of Alzheimer time is the enemy. So to postpone the suicide was clearly a bad idea. It would have been a better plan to set some realistic goals as to what she wanted as closure to her life (like seeing her grandchildren) then do it immediately afterward.

[–] amyfromellen 10 years ago

I would kill myself once the symptoms appear. What's the point of not being able to remember the people around you and at the same time, being a huge liability to the people you love.

[–] tzukeeper 10 years ago

Since I am not wealthy and could not afford a high quality assisted living establishment, I would most likely overdose while I still had the wherewithal.

"So, what would you like to see on your honeymoon, Mrs. Cord?" "Lots of lovely ceilings."

[–] melinda2001 9 years ago

Would you want to live like that even if you were the wealthiest person on the planet? Offing yourself at the right time seems like the best option to me, but that's very difficult to do, especially because you'd probably have to do it entirely on your own. Seems like we need some sort of implantable device that will kill you if you don't remember to reset it each month or change your mind.

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

I sympathize with your perspective--while watching, I was rooting for her plan to work. However, the counterargument could be that when she watches people with dementia from the outside, when she is still high functioning, she thinks "that's horrible--I would rather be dead". But what if, once she becomes like that herself, she--her "new" self--would rather live? It's a quandary.

Think about it from a less extreme perspective (or more extreme, depending on how you look at it). What if her youngest daughter looked at people who had abandoned acting careers and worked some "soulless desk job" as a horrifying fate? She could set up some gizmo to automatically kill her if she ever succumbed to that fate herself. But would the person who did end up "giving up" and "settling" really want to die?

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[–] melinda2001 9 years ago

You make a good point. I know a woman who was alcoholic and wasn't able to kick it on her own but was presented with the option of taking a drug that would make her miserably sick if she drank even one drop of booze. She tried it and had a bad enough reaction from an accidental exposure to trace alcohol and had no problem quitting after that. That seems like a less extreme version of your example that clearly someone might choose. In my example, the person can always choose to postpone death for as long as they remember to, or simply remove the device if they change their mind. It seems like a reasonable choice to me. Ironically so because I have no recollection of having proposed the idea. 😢

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

LOL, that really is ironic!

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[–] wlp325 9 years ago

If you wanted to do something like that I feel it would work best to carry a capsule around your neck and leave many, MANY clues to yourself about opening the compartment, etc.

Alice had to devise a suicide method that would leave her clues, but no one else. If family members found any signs of an impending suicide, they'd likely put a stop to it. Determining the type of clues to leave and trying to guess with how much remaining cognitive ability she still would retain to act on those clues -- without drawing any attention -- is not easy. Her plan likely would have worked, had she had more uninterrupted time to proceed.

Rest in peace, Roger Ebert. You were the best.

[–] Savybones 9 years ago

The problem was she though "I'm going to lose facts but remain myself" and she would casually open the file and follow the directions and kill herself.

She didn't know she would put the phone in the freezer, piss herself and forget her daughter.

OH SPOILER ALERT!

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

It was uncool of her husband to blow off her phone like that though. She should have set it up with iCloud and a fingerprint lock, and insisted that her family always replace it with new ones when needed.

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[–] GuyOnTheLeft 9 years ago

I think someone needs to make an app for such people. App makers get so focused on making everything for the teenage and twentysomething crowd, they fail to see how useful and potentially lucrative apps for older folk could be.

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[–] Samuraibro 8 years ago

They do have apps for older people. Just because it's marketed towards a younger demographic doesn't mean people of all ages can't use it.

[–] GuyOnTheLeft 8 years ago

But I'm talking about apps specifically designed for older people who are having cognitive issues.

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