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?

So much of it is genetics- how fast you process toxins etc ...my friends Grandad lived to 95 smoking a box of cigarettes and a few cigars a day and was never without a whiskey ..

I think these are very wise words. My DM is a healthy stroke victim, a debilitating stroke at that, and DF has had a heart attack, bladder cancer and is now struggling with poor kidney function although lifestyle-wise he pretty much ticks the right boxes. This has all opened my eyes even more to how much we stigmatise these types of diseases and relate health to lifestyle. I suppose part of it is it helps us to believe ‘it won’t be me’.

If she is really downing a litre of vodka a day her liver will not be as fit as a fiddle by a long shot.

I have an aunt who is a heavy smoker and drinker (not quite on par with Aunty Margaret though), drinks a lot of coffee and is generally quite stressy who goes to Well Woman once a year and comes out proclaiming how healthy they said she is and the family are baffled. I take it with a pinch of salt. She doesn't look the picture of health, she's the youngest but looks about 10 years older than her siblings

True - but also not all Muslims are brown!

I feel so sorry for people who drink their lives away. What awfulness happened to them to decide thats how they need to live, thats what they need to get through a day 😥 And liver disease leads to a horrible death too, so I don't wish that on anyone.

Everyone is different, some people can cope with this level of poison, most people wouldn't cope. But presume her body has become used to the alcohol so stopping could kill her. Stopping smoking doesn't have the same affect though the cough is enough to send you back smoking.

Poor Auntie Margaret 😪

@Gawpygertie
Did you know that there are plenty of white Muslims.

I had. A friend who died at 44 drinking a litre of Vodka a day and smoked but she was stuck thin but had no life for many years sad really

My aunt has dementia and she has been quite an unreasonable person all her life, she is divorced and lives alone.

She’s unbearable. However, I am the only relative left standing and live about an hour away.

Her doctor and social services wanted me to get an LPA as she was refusing to pay for her care visits and the council were accumulating huge bills. And she gambles. They said I’d have to apply to get deputyship of her finances which I have.

She is fuming as sadly she doesn’t have access to her money any more.
She used to go to a card club 1/2 nights a week and lost hundreds of pounds each visit, and despite clearly having dementia the people are happy to relieve her of money. The club a busy road in north London and god knows how she gets there or back. Taxi I think. But now she can’t get money. I can give her ‘pocket money’ but these amounts are excessive. It’s sad really but she refused to pay the carers and to fix her house and pay gardeners, cleaners I had to step in. So she does pay her bills now at least.

I orchestrated a live in carer to keep her company and keep her safe at home.
The carer lasted one day and was chucked out on the drive with her belongings.
My partner and his mum think I’m denying her pleasure by not allowing her money to gamble. They think I’m being mean and it’s the only pleasure she had left.But I am under strict supervision by the court of protection to say what’s happened to her money. As well as she’s not safe going out late at night due to dementia.
She is very well off and she liked to gamble, am I being unreasonably to deny her money or discourage her from going?

After she kicked out the carer I’ve avoided her calls and reinstated the four daily care visits and just pay her bills. Because she’s summoning me up an wants money to gamble. But I feel terrible avoiding her, yet it was consuming my life and my small families life with her dramas.
Her neighbours have even formed a what’s app group, complaining she constantly wondering in her dressing gown door to door asking for help or to take her to the bank. I had her dementia re assessed but the mental health team won’t intervene with her going into care, but I don’t really want that either. But her neighbours think she’s a liability in her own home.
What would you do ?

My father was the same, a litre of whisky a day and about 40 ' self rolled' cigarettes, for many years. He had no liver problems and his oxygen level was nearly 100%, the Nurse said it was perfect 🤔 He suddenly died of septicaemia at 71....it does affect you in the end somehow. She has just been lucky so far, but she won't always be and will still die sooner than she would have done, if she hadn't abused her body like this. She's susceptible to a stroke or pancreatitis at some point.

I'd assess how much her bills would be for the next few years, then I'd give her her a generous amount to gamble. If she lives longer then you guess, she'll end up in a state run care home with no more money to pay bills. If you get the numbers right, she'll die happy before her money runs out.

Sorry GoodChat, I’ve re-read it and see it now. The ‘white people’ bit. Not sure why I didn’t spot it the first time.

No need to apologise @eastegg, but I appreciate it all the same

My SIL was drinking a bottle of vodka a day, for years after losing her husband. She also smoked like a chimney - maybe not 60 a day but a lot. She was warned a few times about various test results but because she felt OK, mostly just carried on doing as she wanted. And then everything seemed to happen at once. She started to get pains in her legs, then they started to ulcerate. Tests showed furred arteries due to smoking, which had reduced the blood supply to her lower legs and which had also caused coronary artery disease. There was discussion around amputation of her legs but she didn’t get that far.

She was admitted to hospital after a seizure and it was only after being put on a ventilator and having several CT scans that the true extent of the damage became apparent. Her liver function tests hadn’t shown particular cause for concern throughout all of this, but the alcohol had caused the seizure and they discovered that it had been silently damaging her internal organs so much that that they couldn’t cope with the stress of the ventilator. She died without ever regaining consciousness. The effects of alcohol are cumulative over time and sometimes the true extent doesn’t reflect in testing.

@greathostie this is a very difficult problem and I don't think there's an ideal answer- she has dementia but on the other hand, if she has some capacity then she may well want to spend all her money gambling and on the things she finds fun, given she won't live a hugely long time. It's very difficult when people who smoke heavily or drink heavily or gamble go into care as well, as all of a sudden they either have to stop or the care home needs to accommodate them and many do not want these type of problem clients. I don't know the answer, perhaps what someone else suggested may be a way forward, to give her a small sum to do with as she pleases. I mean she isn't going to be here for ever and she isn't going to change now, same as smokers who are in the later stages of their lives, I don't think they should be forced to quit (I don't think anyone should be forced to quit full stop).

RiverSkater · 12/02/2023 10:40
Maybe it's that generation, and the natural world order correcting the balance?

I read somewhere that after the massive loss of men during the world wars, more boy babies were born. Of course lots of both men and women died.

Maybe that generation were ordained to live longer ?

I know nothing about science and I've just plucked this thought from thin air so am sure it'll be thoroughly debunked !

That generation ate far healthier due to rationing and the allottment schemes and the produce would have been nutritionally superior to now I remember Michael Caine mentioning how good his diet was for a cockney kid in the war fruit and veg home grown. Its not how u imagine but there were allotments everywhere they wouldn’t have eaten all the young food I grew up with microwave ready meals millions of dessert options cheap and tempting everything with tons of sugar and salt

The more I learn about diet and food and obesity..the more I don't buy into the mainstream advice given out

Yes, our GP advised that although heavy drinking inevitably causes fatty liver a a minimum, then the sufferer may go on to develop fibrosis, and in some cases alcoholic hepatitis, only about 15% go on to develop cirrhosis and liver failure. Various factors are at play and I suppose many people would stop drinking if they were made aware of earlier stage liver damage.

I read that about boys being born after wars, "The returning soldier effect" isn't it fascinating! It's stopped for a while, as wars are being fought remotely (think drones and missiles) but now with the war in Ukraine we are going to get a grim look at if it still holds true.

I think you might be on to something with the health of that generation...we eat so much rubbish these days, we're at 1 in 2 will get cancer - and not just diet, it's pollution, sedentary lifestyles with terrible work/life balance, chemicals and preservatives in our food, everything packaged in plastic, all these things that our parents didn't have in their lives.

I have a similar relative. She smokes and drinks daily, a good amount too. She had cancer 40 years ago, when most people didn't survive cancer. She has also had pneumonia and pleurisy in adulthood and tuberculosis as a child. She will be 82 next month! She had a sister who never smoked and barely drank and she lived into her 90's and she had another sister who drank and smoked a lot and lived to 86. She had a tough rural upbringing, but I bet she ate a lot better than most people do today and I think she still eats well, with good quality food. I agree that a lot of it is down to genetics.

I think alot is genetics, but we're so amazed by the fact that people have destructive lifestyles and live a longer life than we expect that we focus on it and sensationalise it. Then it probably creates somewhat of a false narrative that more smoke like a chimney and drink too much and live into their eighties than actually happens.
That's a guess but probably a good one.
Princess Margaret was a good illustration of that: the age when she died wasn't particularly old, especially for her genetics, but for her lifestyle some would be surprised that she lived that long.
Also, as outsiders, no one but her family could tell us how much she smoked and drank.

I can't believe my Aunt Marge is still going. In fact we are thinking of changing her name to I can't believe she's not better.

I also know of someone that died of vascular dementia most probably excellerated by high alcohol consumption.

I assume it was too late for an LPA if your aunt had already been diagnosed with dementia, or that she wouldn’t give permission for one, but if you are her appointed guardian via the court of protection the rules around what you can and can’t do will be similar. Every decision you make has to be in her best interests, and if it’s got to the stage where she’s wandering round outside it does sound as though her capacity is diminished. My mum has vascular dementia and the memory clinic and mental health team wouldn’t intervene with a decision about her care either, because she was judged to have capacity at the time of diagnosis. I assume this was the case for your aunt.

I have an LPA for mum, so in the event that she does need full time care, the decision will be down to me to make. It sounds as though your aunt is pretty much at that stage now. She would have to have been assessed as not having capacity before you could act, but if that’s the case, you may be able to apply to the court of protection for permission to liquidate her assets to provide full time care. You can find details of how to do this on the website of the Office of the Public Guardian. Good luck.

Lack of stress. It’s a massive killer.

It’s so true.

I’ve seen it in my animals too. I’ve mostly always had two pairs of animals - cats, dogs, rabbits. So many over the years since I was a child.

The one that always lives the longest is the stupid one who just floats through life and has no worries.

The smarter one of the pair, which usually came with being more cautious etc always died first, every time.

Currently sat here with my 17 year old cat who’s thick as pigshit but happy as larry. His litter mate was sharp as anything but a worrier (in a cat way, you know what I mean!) he died of cancer at 11.