Doctor told my frail DF (92) that he has just months to live!

[SausageCrush]

Is this usual?
My Df has a variety of health issues, but is still mentally sharp. The news is not a surprise, but i am rather shocked that he was told.
Since the doctor told him on Friday he has been feeling very low.
He obviously knows he is very old and ill, but usually has a very bright outlook and wants to keep going for as long as possible.

Well, all I can say is that it feels different on the other side of the desk.

It's illogical I know but the not being able to visit and that final month on his own in hospitals and nursing homes at the end of his life make me feel like shit and like I let him down.

By the end he didn't understand and thought I wasn't bothering with him. I phoned and tried to explain but am not sure he understood.

It's strange that my mother at 87 who was never called into the GP from one year to the next or given any sort of checks died before him. I feel that although she was very poorly and it was sudden, her death was kinder because she didn't know stuff. She still didn't understand why I didn't visit her (at the end - although she didn't know it was the end). I couldn't because I had Covid by then (because I had been nursing them) so my brother went. We were only allowed one person anyway.

Shit times eh?

I really am sorry for your loss
I can't imagine how awful it must have been to lose both parents in these terrible Covid times. My heart goes out to you.
My own mum is dying of cancer and although I have come to terms with losing her I do pray she can hang on a bit longer so that she can have a better death not spoiled by Covid restrictions.
I think that is the cruelest aspect of this whole sorry thing.

I think if they are allowed visitors that makes all the difference in the world. I hope you are able to visit her - or if not currently then soon.

Thanks for the expressions of sympathy - sorry OP I didn't mean to derail your thread.

With my Mum it seemed that they took the view that your need for working lungs and heart is pretty immediate so the diuretics would be given to keep them going even if longer term the kidneys were going to fail.
When they go the blood electrolytes get buggered which can cause fatal heart irregularities.
I too was worried about Mum spending her last days struggling to breathe but that didn't happen - her heart just conked out (see above), pretty quick and merciful compared to some deaths I've seen.

One thought has just occurred to me - there's a thing called "gold standards pathway" for people in their last 6 months. Recently our GP has been going through all it's older patients to see if people should be added to the list. One of the criteria is "would I be surprised if this person died in the next 6 months?" I wonder if this is what triggered the comments to your dad? Not being surprised if someone died in the next six months is very different from giving them 6 months to live.

I don't know if you meant me or the OP MereDint but if you mean me, if the GP had explained that then he would have understood - although not understood why my mother didn't have one too. She didn't put it that way all though.

I didn't know about the gold standards pathway though, no.

I meant the OP. Replied a bit late in the proceedings because the thought had only just occurred to me.

Six months on and my DF is still going!
He seems to have forgotten what the doctor told him and still desperately wants to live.
He's going to ask about having dialysis next week.
I'm amazed at his positivity and tenacity to go on as his quality of life is so poor. He's pretty much housebound yet always cheerful and optimistic.
I personally don't think he'll be able to have dialysis because of his age, frailty and all his other ailments, but I'm not going to say anything to him.

So glad he's still with you and feeling positive. He sounds like an amazing chap.

I think as adults they should be told if they ask. I think it’s unfair to tell partners or relatives but not the person concerned unless again they ask for that to be the case.

My mother died of cancer at the age of 48, 30 years ago. A consultant told her he had done as much as possible and there was nothing more he could do. At the time it was cruel and destroyed her. She didn’t ask to be told that as there is always hope.

There was a big hullabaloo in the press last year or before about a news story in which it was admitted that GPs regularly get it wrong in predicting how long a person had to live, by underestimating the time.

It was one of those odd stories where you might have to read between the lines a bit. After all, so what if they get it wrong? All the better if someone lives longer than expected. It's not like you'd have the funeral booked and then you have to cancel, is it?

Now I personally understand that the elderly in care homes in particular are put on covert end-of-life care, which is really 'ending life' care. That was my experience with my late mother, who had Parkinson's. It appears to be carried out via dehydration.

It goes like this, it seems - if the powers that be (mainly the local NHS CCG) feel that your parent has less than three months to live, and their condition is terminal (like Parkinson's) then they can legally fast-track that person to the morgue. After all, they're not going to be cured, are they?

Now some can argue the toss about that on this board. I don't care. It does seem by telling your Dad this, it's knocked him for six but if you want and can find the link to the news story and post it. In a recent interview the writer Russell T Davis wrote how his partner had a terminal illness but the truth was kept from him and consequently he lived a lot longer than was expected. So not knowing can be better, that said at around 92, I don't know... 'down to a few years, not months but I've been wrong before' might have been the better way to give the news.

Just about everyone who gets into hospital seems to get Covid it seems but I don't know, it seem he should avoid it. But the whole 'this person is on the way out and has less than a few months' thing, well, I'd be wary of it. The whole NHS Fast-track Continuing Care freebie seemed to go down the route too, after my mum was granted that it was impossible to get the care home to give her enough drink and it seemed we went to war over it. We had to visit daily to ensure it happened - because of this she didn't live another three months but another three and a half years.

It it's clear that doctors are getting life expectancy wrong, the implication is that they're not hastening death but actually murdering their patients and I take it that is why the news story was so significant for those in the know.