How long can people live like this?

Why is everyone talking about antibiotics?
It’s the heart medication, surely

Ved, I couldn't agree more. I am late 60s and stopped all cancer screenings more than 10 years ago. I'm still working, travelling, dog walking and gardening but I've seen extreme old age first hand, and life prolonged with endless antibiotics, and the rest. I'd rather go in the next five years than that.

Apologies not read the whole thread. Too busy dealing with my elderly mum, my own home and my young adult! My mum is 91. Has suffered failing body health (osteoporosis - early menopause, like me. Why do they not tell us of the bone risk!) But OK mentally. Forgetful, but not dementia. Independently living with limited support. But effectively housebound, unless with major support. That was OK, until this year. My sibling died unexpectedly and then a few months later Mum admitted to hospital with delirium due to an infection. Now out, clearly improving as being awkward about ongoing care. Her friendship group of similar age jest it is due to the war diet and rationing. There are so many of them, female in their 90s, but from different locations and backgrounds I think it must be true. My mum has said clearly following the death of my sibling she no longer wants to live on, and has agreed to a DNR. The hospital asked me what I thought after she agreed ( she has capacity in general). I also agreed, she's had her life, some of it better than other times, she can't bear the restrictions on her life, but refuses a care home. So here we are, plodding on.

@AncientBallerina this is what I’ve done and had written into my h&w poa.
I have decided I won’t be continuing with any health mot/testing etc the Gp decides either.

I wonder how many will actually do it, have you yet?

Problem is nobody is allowed to pass away peacefully anymore. They become ill, get blue lighted to A&E to spend 3 days on a trolley in a corridor, pumped full of antibiotics and sent home for more misery. Once upon a time the frail and the elderly would be tucked up in bed, kept comfortable, pneumonia would set it and the end would come. Now it seems that they need to be kept alive at all costs. 30 years ago a very elderly person breaking their hip would be the end.
A 96 year old frail old lady who I knew, broke her hip, admitted to hospital, hip replacement and she was dead inside a week......

The Liverpool path was tried. It meant that elderly sick people were starved. Not only medication was witheld but also food. No quick injection which would be preferable. Luckily the Liverpool path has now been discontinued.

I will have an advance directive to have no antibiotics, no vaccines and no assisted feeding if for example I have advanced dementia or similar where my quality of life is poor. Then I will die naturally of infection most likely with only comfort care. This is how to prevent the situation of elderly people languishing for years in nursing home, but the individual has to have given prior instructions with proper medical and legal involvement m. I’m quite sure many of us who are witnessing this now with our parents generation will make damn sure that it doesn’t happen to us.

There's some nasty stuff on this thread.

Here's a review of "The Experiment" on Channel 4 which I haven't seen became I'm in Australia, but possibly you can see it in the UK. The review is detailed. Its premise is looking at the extent to which ordinary people can be influenced by Nazi ideology, While the subjects are disabled, by any reasonable definition, so are the elderly in this thread.

Some posters on this thread need give their fucking heads a wobble.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/oct/21/the-experiment-channel-four-tv-review-uk-nazi-disability

Are you proposing the state should euthanise them?

@EveningSpread totally agree.
As a society we really do need to think about how people age and death as a package. It comes down to quality versus quantity in my view.
I still regret allowing myself to be persuaded to let the consultant fit a pacemaker to my elderly (91) mil who was already in a care home with advanced dementia. Caused her a lot of distress and prolonged her life to a point it wasn’t a life (not that it was much being in a home anyway), just a being existing.
There is a good reason pneumonia was known as an old man’s friend.

I’ve done this with my 75 year DM with advanced Dementia. She’ll never go to hospital , receive treatment for cancer or a stroke etc.

The situation is much more difficult when the elderly person has capacity.

It’s up to relatives who have P of A, to decline life saving or life prolonging treatments , if they don’t think it’s in the person’s best interests. I have done this for an aunt in her late 80s, with dementia, who was refusing food and drink after the umpteenth UTI. The GP agreed that treatment was not in her best interests, and I knew that letting her go was what my aunt’s former self would have wanted.

Your sentiment didn't need the first sentence, it's clear from it that all you care about is the financial aspect, not the quality of life.

It's pretty simple - every ailment treated aggressively with antibiotics (and screw the rest of us who need them to work in years to come), vaxxed to the hilt, calorie-dense purees and drinks spooned in. And long-term use of other drugs for HBP, statins etc. And doctors who are terrified to make what used to be compassionate decisions about letting nature take its course, and who need to leave a paper trail showing that they have done everything possible to keep that person alive.

I disagree. But the future generation will, who have signed houses and assets over to their kids but will expect care from the state…

Doing the "right" thing or not doesn't seem to make that much difference. Some people far younger than that have severe health issues and are in agony, while their lifestyles were far better than some older people who seem healthy. Luck has a lot to do with it. And if more people thought that, we might live in a country which allowed euthanasia.
Also remember that if you're talking 90 year olds, the food they ate (probably) had more nutrients, and they had far less sugar, and moved much more in their youth than most of us. Surprises me you say they never smoked or drank, but then, they'd have been less likely to binge drink than, say, people born in the eighties.

Exactly this!! We keep people alive so long (to work) and then forget that we were never meant to be that old in the first place.

Fair sensitivity warning ⚠️

Are we really supposed to look like we are half corpses already by the time we go in the ground?? Doubtful.

@HoppityBun are they on a lot of medications that will keep them going to some extent

I love Hospice Nurse Julie, so much fantastic information on end of life care and she's just such a lovely person. We could all do with Hospice Nurse Julie towards the end. I'll check out her videos on decision-making.

I don't think anyone is talking about your MiL.

Have a look at Hospice Nurse Julie on Youtube.

One of her videos is entitled I'm a Hospice Nurse. Here's what I'd do if I got dementia and is an eye opening prompt to really plan end of life care before losing capacity. This includes making choices about being intubated, tube fed, treated for infections, etc. as well as resuscitation.

Watching it has given me a lot to think about.

I think there is sometimes a bit of a plunge in quality of life, not always, but my Grandma looked great at 91, 92, mobile, able to laugh, chat, socialise a bit, slow moving but still moving, able to be part of life.

Once you are bed bound, having pressure sores, incontinent and so on, as well as losing sight/hearing, cognitive decline, any of these can tip what was a very enjoyable old age into something to be endured.

It's fab if your mum still enjoys living her life, I think what's being discussed here is a step on from that which is where it's just not possible to enjoy life in quite the same way, I would find being doubly incontinent and bedbound pretty unbearable, and having to have carers clean and shower me, very unpleasant; I'd also find not being able to speak or communicate easily very difficult which is what happened to my gran, having been chatty up til her early 90s.

I work in care .. you wouldn’t treat animals how humans treat other humans .. how do we get it so wrong 😢

My 93yo granny is like this and it’s awful. She tells my dad she doesn’t want to be here any more every time he visits her in her home, she is almost entirely bedbound, does nothing, enjoys nothing, but lingers on. When my mum died a few years ago, she kept saying ‘It should have been me’. It’s horrible. It will be a relief when she goes. For her as much as anyone.