When I was a young child I asked my Mom would she rather be shot or stabbed?
She answered that is not a good subject to talk about.
During my medical career the subject of which was the worse disease to have?
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A neurologist said it was a stroke that caused receptive and expressive aphasia.
That means the patient can't communicate his thoughts (expressive)
The patient can't understand incoming communication (receptive)
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Metastatic Cancer must be one of the worse.
In earlier days aggressive surgical treatment of Breast cancer left women terribly disfigured with subsequent pain and side effects (swelling of the arm) with few cures.
Present treatment is much less aggressive. However radiation therapy can have many troubling subsequent late side effects, especially for Prostate surgery.
Chemotherapy can give many patients with severe cancers 5 years of more life which considered to almost be a cure. However the frequent multiple treatments can make the patient feel very sick. This is where suffering to save a life or prolong life seems to have a positive effect. Some people choose not to go through the pain and sickness of chemotherapy and let nature take its course.
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Alzheimers disease is often said not to cause suffering for the patient but for the family.
Not true as this excellent article relates
My thanks to Jasja De Smedt Kotterman for writing what is the best Alzheimers article I have read to date. 
Below are excerpts of the article.
I (Brian) have told my family (living will) to please give me a palliative morphine drip.
If I don't have sense of self and can't walk I would ask my family to stop all my diabetic and heart medications.
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