I caught the last half of the “Frontline” special Tuesday night on PBS on "Living Old." Most of the focus on our aging society — those over 85 are our fastest growing segment of the U.S. population — is on the economic impact, which will be huge. But the special also dealt with the human impact — what it’s like being old, end-of-life decisions, the burden of being a caregiver, the state of many nursing homes. The opinion of one of the elderly persons interviewed: Growing old is for the birds.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
Registered?
Commenting on WE Blog now requires you to be a Kansas.com member. Use the links above to register, if you haven't already, or to log in.Contact us
Follow us
Daily Archives
-
Recent Comments
- writerdog on Health care reform would save state money
- Phantom on Health care reform would save state money
- Monkeyhawk on Open thread 11/22
- Phantom on Minority status in Senate; majority approval at home
- BlueJay on Open thread 11/22
- CapnAmerica on Health care reform would save state money
- Monkeyhawk on Open thread 11/22
- CapnAmerica on Open thread 11/22
- Phantom on Health care reform would save state money
- Monkeyhawk on Minority status in Senate; majority approval at home
4 Comments
I’ve worked the nursing home industry and the downfall of this business has been the greedy corporations that have bought and sold homes like they were pieces in a chess game!
Health care should not be about dollar and cents. But unfortunately the Medicare dollar profits are too high of a temptation for corporations not to get their greedy hands on all those dollars just waiting for the grabbing.
But the patients are the ones that pay the real price – in losing their dignity in the process of our so-called Christian nation handling the care of the elderly.
This is a subject that has really hit home for me, my dad dying two years ago at seventy five, my mother becoming to frail and slow witted to take care of herself and moving in with us. I have had to think more on the subject of aging and be exposed to how this country treats our elderly.
From the first time at fifteen when I went to a nursing home for my great aunt to my dad ending his life in one. I was shocked and depress at how end of life is handled. You can not enter a nursing home without passing the slack-jawed, those that seem totally out of it as they set in wheel chairs at or in front of the main nurses station. They blank stares that seem to never truly acknowledge your passing by, or any word you may say. Their bodies have outlived their minds and it is the hollow shell that is there, who they were has already passed away. It is the outer being that is left for those that they once loved to visit.
In many ways it was good how dad passed, he died January 4th and the last time I had visited him was for Christmas. At that time I had said something to him that turned out to be the way he went. “Dad I hope you understand what I mean when I say. I hope you die like Grandpa did.”. Grandpa had asked Grandma how much long it would be for supper. She told him about another forty five minutes, so he laid down on the couch for a quick nap. He died in his sleep that evening and did not suffer long and was still full of life at his passing. Dad was in good sprints the morning he simply fell over on to the breakfast table at the home.The nurse said he had been joking with her and seem to be doing good. He just simply was gone the next moment, oh that we all go that way. The lose of life should be something not worth losing, rather then a true blessing for you and all you love.
Now something I have been suspecting and it is a subject that is somewhat troubling to think about.Medical science has came to the point where it is easier to keep the body alive. But still the mind which is what we are truly made of can not be so easily maintained. So the situation become the opposite of Lou Garlic’s disease, in that the mind is the last bodily function to end. Leaving you trapped in a your own body.Imagine that your mind is still crisp and aware and it is your body that is of no use even to simply talk.But with the advances in medical science we now have it where the mind is gone but the body is still alive as we age. Leaving the outer shell functioning, but who we are is gone.
Something I came to suspect with my mother’s Doctor and some of the others I came to know. That there is a plan, when it comes to dealing with the elderly. Make them outwardly comfortable but allow them to die.The cost of trying to save a life that has came to the point that it is not longer someone that can contribute to our society drains the available resources and takes away from the pool of knowledge that could be used on someone that is still a contributor to the society as a whole. Otherwise saying that they have came to the conclusion that the patients has outlive their usefulness. Better to let them die then to continue them to the point that they become a waste and burden on the family. Of course this can be the wrong conclusion as was the case with my mother. With nothing changed she was speeding to a fast end of diabetes and to die of diabetes shock. Once she came to live with us and started seeing a different Doctor locally, her health both physical and mental improved and she became a person still active at seventy five. Her dependence on insulin drop from almost 30 units in the morning to 18 units. While left to her own devises and those of her Doctor, she was not eating the minim food intake yet still taking a higher dose of insulin. Her Doctor at the time either did not catch this or thought it better she die quicker.
I have come to suspect that this maybe the trend in medicine, since on a logical and practical level it is less of a burden on our society as a whole to get these useless lives over as quick as possible. Also on their families, doing away with years of cost and repeated trips to a nursing home till finally the death is a welcome relief rather then a great loss. Enduring years of seeing a loved one who no longer even recognizes you. Becoming one of the slack-jawed that is the greeting at the front entrance. It is a cold and could be taken as unfeeling approach to the problem of getting older.
Since moving in with us, mom can be a real pain at times but it is less painful then seeing her like she was before the move. I wish for her the same that I had wished for my dad two years ago, because I love her.
http://www.demensionszine.com/stories/0503f1.html
Ok here is some self premotion, a story I had wrote that was published. “THE WISH FOR DEATH”.It is on a related topic.
I agree with suza, I also worked in nursing homes and am very concerned for what is happening in our healthcare system for the elderly. Cheaply paid and overworked aides, and nurses who don’t want to supervise and administrators that turn a blind eye to bad employees in order to keep a warm body.
Writer, I do agree with allowing one to die with dignity and with the best supportive care possible. But doctors seem to be less worried about one in their elder years, even pain control being lacking.Some are good, and others are not. But we do have hospice and that is one awesome program.