I quit worrying about cancer when I read about a study having linked certain bedroom behaviour to significantly increased risk of a kind of cancer. Thought about it and realized there is literally nothing I enjoy that hasn't been blamed for cancer one way or another. Even going out riding exposes you to a lot of sunlight, laying out the welcome mat for skin cancer. A life trying to avoid cancer just wouldn't be worth considering, let alone living.

Emphysema is rougher, I watched a great grandmother go out that way and it sucked. It's still only a physical thing, though, not a huge deal. Mental deterioration is where the true horror is at. There's nothing quite like seeing a smart, formidable man reduced to a weeping child, wanting only a glass of chocolate milk and unable to understand why he can't have one. That was another relative, and it was the most heartbreaking and pathetic thing I've ever witnessed. I'd rather be dead of emphysema at 50 than develop Alzheimer's or something similar around 60, and then hang on till 70.

Probably best to just die in a spectacular bike wreck if possible.