Are we wanting immortality?

[MsHeffaPiglet]

It's sad that people in care homes have died.

Does it matter whether they died because of cornavirus, rather than a general infection, from a fall, from a stroke or a heart attack or just old age?

If you are 80, 85, 90 or 95, isn't waking up each day a blessing. Does someone of that age expect or want to live forever?

I understand that you want to spend the last moments with loved ones and that is the cruellest thing with coronavirus and the need to isolate from everyone.

However, I just don't understand the shock, horror at the fact that elderly people in care homes have been affected so much. Is it so surprising?

And actually, despite my point about my DH's DHF, if he were alive now, he would probably have wanted to catch the virus and die, once he was in residential care. Because his only DC (my FIL) died in a car accident and my DH's DGM died 3 months later. My DHF lingered on in a residential home and was essentially waiting to die.

However, it would have been a horrible end, which is why whatever precautions that can be taken to protect elderly people in residential homes should be taken.

There have been so many thoughtful views on this. Thank you for all the responses. I was fully expecting to be totally flamed! I have received some, but far less than I expected.

@VladTheDictator

It's certainly not about ageism. It's about expectations for end of life care and treatment. If you are relatively healthy and want to carry on, then of course you should and receive the help needed, so long as it did not cause you more damage than not doing anything.

If you are frail and your quality of life means you have no dignity and you have previously expressed to your loved ones that you do not want life extending treatment just because it's available then your decisions should be respected.

I have tried to talk about what I want to happen to me when I die (touch wood that will not be imminent), but so many people consider it morbid to discuss it. If they can't talk about funerals or cremations, how will they cope being asked about DNAR decisions. But I suppose it's like organ donations. Relatives say yes they will abide by decisions made when the person was alive, but then defer to their own personal opinions at the end.

My dad has vascular dementia and he has never settled in his care home and been miserable since my mum died 10 years ago.
He has been a constant worry to us for years. He is 98 and there isn't much quality of life for him. I'm dreading getting old and getting dementia or any other life limiting diseases etc, It's no life. I would rather not be here. It's just how I feel , but I can't speak for others of course.

No, of course we're not functioning normally at the moment - the point is it would be worse if we were letting the disease spread unchecked through the population, and what we're doing now is temporary.

The idea that the previous 'normal' is still available to go back to, if we would just stop this silly idea of trying to slow down the spread of the virus, unfortunately has no basis in reality. Uncontrolled illness will be worse than short periods of lockdown interspersed with some heavy-duty social distancing or whatever we're going to have now, and that's why we're doing those things.

I don't really know why care homes in particular are the focus of OPs post but I think she's saying that these are often people with so many multiple health issues that they can be carried off at any time. Not sure its ageist to point out that our lives all end in death. There are so many ways of dying that are bad, very few that are good. My granny died alone in her house after breakfast one day, at the age of 101, we had said our goodbyes a few weeks before as we knew it wasn't long. That's not bad. My father died alone in an ambulance, bleeding to death, in excruciating pain. That's bad, but he was out of options and would otherwise have died a hideous, lingering death of COPD, which he was terrified of. So no, I don't think life is always worth prolonging at all costs.

It's not just elderly people that Covid is affecting. Sadly the media is perpetuating this information when many many healthy young people are dying too.

Are we herd animals or is it a case of survival of the fittest? Because a lot of (most?) current residents of care homes wouldn’t be fit enough to be hunter/gatherers would they?

People who stick their parents into care homes (I was one of them) aren’t exactly adopting the herd mentality are they? Herd mentality by proxy?

Maybe people need to make their minds up and/or decide what is realistic given the crisis in social care funding etc

As for Covid, it’s a virus, it’s natural. It’s doing what diseases used to do more frequently. Until we kept too many people alive for too long, coupled with a subsequently falling birth rate leading to said problems in Social Care.

@tootletum

Not sure it's ageists to suggest our lives all end in death

Is subtle but hilarious

Well thanks to Mittens, I for one am still reflecting on why we are more concerned about Covid killing x people (mostly old) than malaria killing xxx people (mostly young).
The answers don’t reflect well on us....

Dehumanising the elderly No one has done that here though. You could argue that it's inhumane to use every modern medical procedure available to keep a very elderly dementia patient alive. Someone that is often mentally distressed, confused, soiling themselves and in pain.

“It's inhumane to use every modern medical procedure available to keep a very elderly dementia patient alive. Someone that is often mentally distressed, confused, soiling themselves and in pain.”

It’s the distress and pain that counts, I think.

Would it be reasonable to find it shocking if, say, a care home was wiped out by an asteroid and every resident was killed in one day? (After all it would still be true that all those residents would be close to death anyway and that their life in the care home might be a bit crap.) I think it might justifiably make the news!

Some people might want to be able to push this illness into the background of their life as something that only affects old people, but that's not where it is yet. It's not an endemic disease that can rumble around on the edges of our lives just taking out a few elderly people who'd be sure to die soon anyway and not affecting us.

It's a new disease and the effect it's going to have on our lives is not the fault of other people having somehow got the wrong idea about death so they're giving too much priority to keeping old people alive. Everyone changing their supposedly wrong attitudes to death is not suddenly going to make life go back to normal.

“Would it be reasonable to find it shocking if, say, a care home was wiped out by an asteroid and every resident was killed in one day? “

Yes.
But also reasonable to think “thank god it wasn’t a nursery school”.

Would it be necessary for there to be a thread discussing how people oughtn't to be shocked about the care home and how this represents them not understanding what life in a care home is like, and having unrealistic ideas about immortality?

I agree with you, OP.

I am hoping I die quickly and painlessly before I get into my 80s. I am hoping this for my own sake, but also for that of my children. I have no desire to be in a care home. I would rather die on horseback in my 70s.

I mean come on-an asteroid wipes out only a care home and nothing else? We'd secretly feel relieved wouldn't we? That it hadn't hit the school down the road...

No, but I’m not following.
Asteroids are freak events. Disease is universal.

We have a duty to care for the old.
But we have a duty to protect the young...

We aim as a society for quantity over quality of life. We have been so removed from death - because very long life is now expected, and because we tend not to look after the very old ourselves within our families - that we think that it is always a 'tragedy', something to be 'battled'.
But death can be done 'well' - that's why a lot of hospices are amazing places - or it can be done 'badly' - eg putting a very old person through trauma and pain in hospital with little hope of a positive outcome instead of using palliative care in their home.
We have to learn to let people go and not insist, for our own selfish needs and due to our own fear of death, that they live on for us. As for C19 being more horrible and painful than any other cause of death, is it? Or do we simply not respect and support palliative care enough in this country... because we're terrified of death and want everyone to live forever.

I mean come on-an asteroid wipes out only a care home and nothing else? We'd secretly feel relieved wouldn't we? That it hadn't hit the school down the road...

No. I wouldn't, especially after having the misfortune of living next to a school.

My grandfather was most scared of losing his independence and never wanted to be in a home. There came a time when he had had enough, his friends were dead and he too wanted to die.

“We aim as a society for quantity over quality of life”

Do you think this is because long ago you had to be pretty remarkable physically to live to your 90s? And we forget that that’s no longer the case-you’re often being kept alive....

It's interesting to consider our attitude towards death on an individual and a cultural level.

As living things, our instincts are to avoid it at all costs. Almost every healthy living thing has a drive to live (unsurprisingly).

And yet it's the one thing which is inevitable for every single one of us on the planet. It is natural. It will happen to everyone.

Sometimes I do think we lose perspective as a society, for example when we fight to keep someone who is so ill they could never function again on life support for years because the mantra is that life is always better than death. Sometimes, it's time to let them go.

I think I like Stephen Hawking's attitude: "I am not afraid of death. But I am in no hurry to die."

Has anyone bothered to ask care home residents what they want?

In my mums care home the youngest is 85, the oldest 103. The ones that can go out, would all rather just take their chances. Being coped up at their age is a living hell. My mum went out under falling bombs during the war. She said this is worse because she doesn't have the choice to do as she pleases. She would rather die than be cooped up indefinitely.

As an aside, you don't die gasping for breath and in agony with pneumonia from Covid. You are sedated and allowed to pass away peacefully. It is bad and frightening to give people the impression that it is a horrible way to die.

I completely agree OP. My thoughts are that if you’re lucky enough to live until your 80 then you’ve certainly had a good crack at life. Anything more is a blessing.

Thousands of people die each day in Britain, many of them far too young, including children, so I can’t get sad about those in their 80’s and 90’s dying I’m afraid.

I can certainly get sad about them suffering. No one should die drowning in their own mucus but I would hope they would be sedated so wouldn’t be aware of if?