To wonder how my Aunty Margaret is still alive?

[Marie2023]

My Aunty Margaret has just turned 70. She’s 15 years older than me and all the time I’ve known her she has been an alcoholic. She hasn’t been invited to any family gatherings since the 90s because she always gets drunk, causes a scene and ruins the event. She hasn’t had a job for years but has a partner who looks after her financially.

Aunty Margaret currently drinks a litre bottle of vodka during the day and more drinks when her partner gets home from work. She also smokes around 60 cigarettes a day. She rarely eats and is stick thin.

Recently Margaret wasn’t feeling very well so her partner took her to the doctor. The doctor ordered some tests which came back fine. His summary of the situation was: “Margaret is as fit as a fiddle, although should probably consider drinking and smoking a bit less.”

🤔

I am honestly amazed she’s still alive, let alone “fit as a fiddle”. Why is it that some people can abuse themselves like that for years with no consequences?

My friend's grandfather smoke and drunk, and made 93. His uncle at 101 still lives independently and cares for his younger wife. His mother though neither smoke nor drank but developed Parkinsons and passed in her early 80s (the youngest to dies in that line). On his father side absolutely no smoking and only the occasional drink yet they all die prematurely. My friend has had a quadruple bypass a few years after his doctor told him not to worry as his BP and cholesterol were excellent!" Yes there are good genes and there are bad ones!

Liver function tests rarely tell the whole story. You can have advanced cirrhosis and still have a normally functioning liver, right up to the point where it gives out.

Yes this was true of my MIL. She drank vast amounts of gin daily, she looked fine, said she felt fine. She was so used to it she was never obviously drunk. One day she and FIL got a stomach bug on holiday. He got better, she got worse. When they got home she was admitted to hospital and the sudden strain on her organs from the bug had made her overworked liver fail even though it had been doing its job until then. She died two weeks later. Age 70.

My MiL and her younger brother both died of cancer in their 60s, one of colon, one of pancreatic. Neither smoked, neither was overweight, MiL hardly drank, her brother did, but not excessively.

Their elder brother, who’d always drunk like a fish and smoked like a chimney, outlived them both by well over 10 years.

I’m convinced that genes play a major part.

That’s so sad, I’m so sorry. I think this is what a lot of people don’t factor in. If you abuse your body, your organs suffer and fail when you need them most. I’ve seen this so many times, not least when my husband was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was placed on a ventilator and died a few days later because earlier abuse from tobacco and alcohol meant that vital organs couldn’t support him from the effects of the ventilator. He was a smoker and had given up ten years previously. He drank, but not to excess, and not an alcoholic, but enough to make a significant difference in those circumstances.

I had a great uncle who smoked 70-80 cigarettes a day, he died in old age of nothing to do with smoking. He was a lovely man, he did have a bad cough.

I wish my Auntie Margaret was still alive! Keep seeing this and thinking what? She's alive?! Oh no.

Good genes.

I swear to God my MIL used to smoke whilst doing the dishes, fag smouldering away on the windowsill, one massive draw that'd suck half the fag away between yellow marigold'd fingers! :)

I think at her peak she was doing about 80 a day...she's just never NOT got a fag on the go.

Some people are just lucky. My dad died at the age of 76 which isn't that old really but he smoked all his life and right up to his last moments, he was active, fit and well. OK the thing that eventually took him was probably due to his smoking but it was quick and peaceful.

Firstly, how do you know Auntie M drinks a litre of vodka a day & smokes 60 fags a day? Do you live with her or are you possibly over exaggerating?

Secondly, if the above is correct - how do you know Auntie M isn’t feeding you a load of old BS to get you all off her back? The doctors could’ve told her she’s in very bad shape - a nicotine addicted alcoholic is unlikely to be a paragon of truth are they?

I take Auntie M and the OP with a large pinch of salt!

My great grandfather was like this, except he was overweight. Think of the posh drunk in the Fast Show. He seemed to live forever. We put it down to his organs being pickled by alcohol. He lived well into his 90’s & was a truly terrifying drunk, but we still all loved him & pandered to him. I’m hoping it’s genetics😀

I wondered this about being slightly overweight later in life, as anecdotally, the people I know who have survived to a good age have had some meat on them, whereas those who died younger were much thinner and therefore frailer.

So it's a gamble as to whether you risk the heart attacks, strokes and cancers associated with being overweight at a younger age to eventually live longer 😁

And not all white families drink! (Mine don't!)

But also, cirrhosis and liver failure surprisingly isn't inevitable, even after drinking to that extent.

70 is still a lot younger than average life expectancy for a woman born in 1953. I expect it will catch up with her in a year or two.

I'm 60 and don't know anyone who has died under 70 in my roughly current generation, in all of my very wide circle of friends and acquaintances, apart from two or three cancer sufferers whose cancers were not linked to smoking or alcohol (they were just bloody unlucky) and one suicide.

I think this about my great aunt. I think if she stopped smoking 40 a day she’d die without the toxins somehow

Hopefully I'm not scaring you saying this. Those that drink and smoke to that extent are not perfectly healthy, ever. My DM died two years ago, we had a coroners hearing due to them not knowing why she died. Her autopsy revealed damage no doctors test would ever have discovered without deep investigation by specialists. Your aunt has been very lucky, in my experience the three people in my family who drank/smoked heavily were dead by their 50s.

She's already embalmed 😂. My gran was the same. Chain smoker, full on alcoholic. Was a riot at family events and needed carefully managed.

Seriously though just clearly her body has grown tolerance levels

My maternal grandmother (nasty woman) was a gin loving ,chain smoker who survived with one lung until she died in her sleep at age 78 from
’natural causes’ in the 1970’s.

Fit as a fiddle until then. Lung removed due to TB when she was a child apparently.

My late father was a regular drinker. We wouldn’t class him as an alcoholic but his gp had him down as one. Just religiously had 3 pints every night. He regularly had check ups at the gp and surprisingly his liver was always fine. His post mortem showed pneumonia as cause of death and all his organs were ‘unremarkable’. Bad luck he’d picked up an infection, probably at the pub. Early 70s.

@LeilaDarling You made me laugh never have I read such a description lol

3 pints a night, every night is 42 units of alcohol a week - 3 times the recommended safe level, so not really surprised your GP regarded him as having an alcohol problem. And as mentioned several times on the thread, a liver function test can come back normal right up until the time your liver packs up.

To be fair a he’s probably pickled herself with the booze & embalmed herself with all the formaldehyde in the cigarettes 😬

What defines some drinkers as ‘alcoholics’ is whether they can go without that regular or ‘social’ drink not the actual amount that they drink. Even those that only drink on one night of the week but drink a lot, commonly known as binge drinkers, can be alcoholics.
My friends mum didn’t think she had a drink problem. She happily polished off between 1 & 3 bottles of wine a night, held down a high flying job in a bank & assumed she could just stop drinking. Cue a massive nope.
She had terrible withdrawal when she didn’t have that glass of wine in her hand, massive DT’s & her liver crashing when she cold turkey cut out the booze.
She was shocked she was an alcoholic.

How does Gawpygertie’s comment suggest that they think all brown people are Muslims? Just how exactly?