Sharon and I had one of those tests when we got our “genomes sequenced” (see chapter 7 for more details) and when the results were ready, we had to make that decision for real. It was a very big deal for my wife, ’cos her dad got Alzheimer’s, and it was horrific. Believe me, having seen what happened to him, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst fucking enemy. In his heyday, my father-in-law was one of the scariest people I’d ever met, but at the end of his life he’d been reduced to a child. Having said that, my view is that if you know about something in advance, you can do a lot to slow it down—and you might even have a chance of curing it, especially as new treatments come out over the years. Sharon feels the same way. Luckily for us, nothing in our genes suggest we’re any more likely to get Alzheimer’s than any other person.
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
Unless you put a gun to head on your 65th birthday, it ain’t exactly a choice you get to make, is it? Having said that, the thought of sticking around for too long seems like the worse option to me. I know a woman whose friends all died years ago, then her husband died, so she ended up living on her own… and then to top it off she got dementia. That ain’t a life by anyone’s definition. My own mum didn’t have an easy time, either—right at the end of her life she was robbed blind by two guys who knocked on her door and told her they were from the electricity board. I’ve already told my wife: if it gets to the bitter end and there’s an off-switch you can press, don’t hesitate for one second.
¦ Hit on the head by a coconut. Supposedly this kills 150 people every year around the world—coconuts drop from as high as 25 metres with a force of 1,000 kgs—making the odds 250 million to one. They say that being killed by a coconut is more likely than being killed by a shark. I’d still rather see a coconut above me than a fin next to me in the water.
¦ Standing too close to an exploding toilet. Self-explanatory, this one—and not exactly what you’d want anyone writing on your death certificate. It does happen, though. Estimated odds: 340 million to one.
¦ Legally executed. Obviously this depends which country you’re in—the odds would be zero in Britain, ’cos there’s no death penalty—but in America they’re 97,000 to one. Which makes it a more popular way to croak than if you were…
¦ Bitten by a dog. This one’s a bit of a worry, given that I’ve got 17 of the fucking things. Luckily most of ’em are the size of tea cups. Odds: 121,000 to one.
¦ Eaten by a cannibal. How the fuck anyone calculated this statistic is beyond me, but the chances of ending up as someone’s lunch allegedly works out at 25 billion to one. In terms of things to worry about, it’s up there with being hit by an asteroid (7.5 billion to one) and being trapped in a freezer (360 million to one).
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
It might be serious, or it might not be, but you should go and see a neurologist, just in case. I also started to jumble my words up as I got older—although stutters run in my family. It usually happens when I’m excited or frustrated. I used to treat it with a nip of booze every now and again, which helped, until I became a raging alcoholic. By the time people saw me on
Dear Dr. Ozzy,
Whatever you do, don’t just sit there like a lump, waiting for the Grim Reaper to arrive. Find something you enjoy doing, maybe some kind of exercise—not bonking the next-door neighbour’s wife—and let off your pent-up frustration through that. Look at me: I’m 62 years old, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t run around with groupies any more, but at the moment I’m doing a two-and-a-half-hour rock ’n’ roll show in a different city every night, and—in my head at least—I feel like I’m 21 years old. Don’t give up, man. Seriously. Accept the things you can’t change and get on with your life.
¦ A mind-blowing 59 million people (roughly) die every year on Planet Earth, with the most popular reason being a dodgy ticker. In fact, heart disease accounts for 12.2 per cent of all deaths throughout the world, rich and poor.
¦ Strokes give heart attacks a good run for their money on the Grim Reaper’s Hit List, coming in at No. 2 and killing 5.7 million people a year—9.7 per cent of all deaths.
¦ Pneumonia and emphysema (lower respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, to use the proper terms) come in at No. 3 and No. 4. Smoking is the leading cause of emphysema, another very fucking good reason to quit.
¦ Never in a billion years would I have guessed the fifth most common cause of death in the world: diarrhoea. Tragically, more than half of all the 2.2 million victims every year are kids under five years old, and they get it from dodgy food and water. Although it’s easily treatable in the West, if you’re in a poor country, a bad case of the runs can kill you from dehydration and fluid loss—especially if you’re already malnourished.
¦ After diarrhoea, the other most likely ways to die are: AIDS (No. 6), Tuberculosis (No. 7), lung cancers (No. 8), road traffic accidents (No. 9), and premature birth/low birth weight (No. 10).
Dear Dr. Ozzy:
To a certain degree I could understand “Dr. Death” when he said doctors should be able to help their patients top themselves. But then again, knowing America the way I do, if it became legal, somebody would end up doing a deal—y’know, “If you pop my nan, I’ll give you 25 per cent of the inheritance” kind of thing. There are certain kinds of doctors of here—
