What when it's our turn?

[aramox]

Staggering on caring for elderly parents with no quality of life, I'm trying to think how to avoid getting into the same situation myself. I have one child who I don't want to care for me. But I also don't actually want to live that long. I don't want to be taking loads of medications and getting dementia. Lots of my older relatives died fairly easily in their 70s or early 80s, but that's much rarer now. How are you preparing your own life for future ageing? And is anyone else thinking about trying to avoid medical interventions that keep us alive too long?

@aramox

I know. But try talking to doctors/surgeons like that! Happy to operate on those who will have no quality of life if they survive - we just don't have a model for thinking about it. But would I avoid taking statins, for example? or preventative investigations?

I have LPA for an elderly relative with dementia, she's even older than me! When she fell and broke her hip the surgeon was happy to discuss the pros and cons of surgery, the survival rate at 12 months, her quality of life. I decided to go ahead, 2 years later she has done well. It was a difficult decision but I found the surgeon very helpful.

I have agreed a DNR for her, again her GP was happy to talk through the pros and cons.

I found it hard with my relative, as she got worse she fought the idea of a home and for a time I was the worst person in the world because it was all my fault that she had to go into a home.

I've told my kids that they are not to do the care work, put me in a home and don't feel guilty even if I object at the time. Here and now of sound mind I do not want my children wiping my backside.

A friend and I have talked about getting some heroin and going out on a major high if/when we get to the 'had enough' stage - rather that than a slow decline, awful

I reckon about 85 years will be enough for me. Luckily I am exposed to old age and death and know how to make decisions that will keep me comfortable but not prolong my life (as long as I have the guts to carry them through).

I am 62 and in excellent health but have a legally binding Advance Care Decision already logged with my GP and husband and kids.

Good savings for care homes, carers etc and do not expect my kids to sacrifice their lives to care for me.

Given the kids permission to tell me when I need to stop driving/need to start getting help and care.

@AmandaHoldensLips

Definitely. I have absolutely no interest in staying alive once I am past my amuse-by date. Once health or brain is on its way out, I have every intention of calling it a day.

My kids are under strict instructions to shove me under a bus and have been told they are not to put themselves out or even feel obliged for a single minute to become carers for me.

Ideally I would like to score a big bag of drugs and go out with a bang at a music festival like Glasto. Or maybe bung myself off the back of a cruise ship. Anything to avoid the hideous prospect of living an unwanted life.

Absolutely agree. I am hoping that Dignity in Dying becomes a thing soon, with legal, controlled assisted death.

So the vast majority of posters on here intend/would want to kill themselves. In reality, how many people actually do that in old age? Very very few. Because whatever we think when we're well, we're primed to stay alive, even when we're old and life isn't great.

I have a particular health reason to have been considering how to take matters into my own hands, and within the next few years. Then about a year ago I had a curious dream - I'd gone to a Dignitas type clinis and they gave me two tablets, one which I'd taken, and one which had to be taken 24 hours later ... and I didn't want to take it! But I was scared about what damage had been done by the first. All a dream, of course, but it left me thinking hard about what I really wanted.

Then at the start of Covid, that awful time when they were simultaneously telling older people that they had a high risk of death, but that treatment would be reserved for those "with a better chance of success", age being an important criterion, I strongly felt I wasn't ready to die yet.

"well, there's not much point living past 70 anyway". Luckily I wasn't on the chat because I'd have got in trouble for agreeing. What is it about being over 70 that makes it not much point living? I'm nearing that age, I spend a lot of time with 70-80 year olds who are enjoying themselves immensely, travelling, potholing, kayaking... Over 80 people seem to slow down a bit, but the 70s seems to be a very active exciting time.

My parents are struggling at 89. They both take a cocktail of meds every day. So very frail, one with Alzheimer’s and the other with heart problems.

My newish partner is my age but his parents are only about 68 and in good shape. He wants them to live forever. I tell him that I wouldn’t wish 88 on anyone. His grandparents all keeled over with heart failure/strokes at 75-80 so he’s had no experience of really elderly people with decaying minds and bodies who’ve had a gutsful of “existing”. It’s awful and undignified.

A video featuring an ancient retired ballerina went viral last year. The music to Swan Lake had set her off doing arm movements in her wheelchair. People were calling it wonderful but I found it quite depressing how someone so talented, musical and fit had come to that.

Mere, I don't know why my friend has 70 in her head but it might be linked what her parents health was like.

For me, I just can't imagine watching life go on that long. It feels very repetitive already. My parents couldn't have gone near those activities in their 50s and I am the same. DH much more physical. I am not sure that activities give my life much meaning anyway.

I don't know that I have any recognisable label worthy religious views but I can't help feeling that death is a release. Our 64 year old friend did a lot of good things in his life and I wonder if early release was his reward.

Can’t overemphasis enough the importance of signing a DNR document, and, you have to take it everywhere with you, otherwise, paramedics are going to jump on your chest if you croak. Informing your relatives won’t count. I’ve seen tiny little old ladies suffer the indignity of CPR, it’s a brutal process.

Green

Cross post
That video really upset me, on levels I can't explain.

I can understand if you're of an age and charging around like the Queen or the late Duke of Edinburgh, you might feel differently about long life. But I am not like that.

I am sorry, it must be incredibly hard to see your parents in that position.
I hope I am not causing offence in saying that. I don't know what the future holds for my parents but the idea of them becoming more fragile horrifies me.

So the vast majority of posters on here intend/would want to kill themselves.

I think you are missing out the end of that first sentence, where we would say "in certain circumstances".
Most people in old age fortunately don't reach that stage.

In reality, how many people actually do that in old age? Very very few.

Well of course not, because there currently isn't a legal, or comfortable way of doing that, unless you are rich enough to go to Dignitas and well enough to travel. When the laws are changed, so that people have a realistic option, I think you'd find more folk would.

Because whatever we think when we're well, we're primed to stay alive, even when we're old and life isn't great.

I don't want to claim to be speaking for anyone else, but I'm not talking about when I've 'slowed down a bit in old age' or 'when my hearing isn't what it was' or 'when it takes me longer to do some things'. I'm talking about if I have a terminal illnesses, being given the choice to be able to have an injection or drink a cocktail of drugs when I am ready. Particularly if I have a degenerative condition and am slipping into a place where I can't talk, I can't swallow, and I am incontinent. I would like the option to choose to end my life perhaps 3 months earlier than it will end anyway with medical interventions keeping me alive. I'd like the option to know I am going to be able to make that decision when it is right for me, and not have to wait to starve to death or some other long, drawn out period where my loved ones watch me suffer because refusing food or refusing particular drugs is the only way we are legally currently allowed to choose to die in the UK.

My mum cared for my grandmother. My mum said all the stuff you’re all saying. Now she’s actually old and needs care herself, she’s changed her mind.

Easy to say this stuff when you’re not there yet.

I will sign every DNR and Advanced Directive going. But it won’t help much if, like my mother, I develop dementia. She has a DNR in place, but it hasn’t been needed so far. She is now 90, very frail with advanced dementia, but survived Covid this time last year.
She wanted to be able to go quietly when she needed 24hr care 6 years ago, but sadly that isn’t possible.

My plan is, when I get the illness in my seventies - the cancer or heart attack or whatever, that is supposed to kill you, I'll let it kill me. I won't ask for it to be treated. I'll explain I want DNR if I have a heart attack after 70. Almost everyone I know including both my parents had diseases that should have seen them off years ago but NHS stuffed them with drugs and chopped the bad bits out and stitched them up just so they could descend in to some twilit hell of decades of constant pain and confusion and hospital visits and lonely years eked out in dementia wards.

I hate - I really hate - our cultures obsession with life and revulsion at death. Death is normal and natural. It is not to be feared. My dad spent an hour whining at me from his care home about the food, the medication, the staff, the loneliness, the boredom, the lack of stimulation and then said he wants to be immortal. he wants to live forever. His attitude baffles me.

I have already told DH and DC I have about 15- 25 years left in me absolute maximum and then I'm out of here. I've lived the life I want to live, done the things I want to do. I have a handful of bucket list things left and of course I'd love to help raise a grandchild but that's it.

It's so important to talk to loved ones about their wishes before they get incapable. My mother won't discuss it with me which is difficult as as I organised POA a couple of years ago. She says the doctor knows, but they won't be asking the doctor presumably.

I agree that life should not be prolonged when there is no quality to it anymore. However, some people have caring responsibilities and fear dying as it will leave the cared for person without any support.

Cowbells speaks for me too, 100%. Have done all I can paperwork wise to be 'put down' when called for and family well aware of my feelings. Not quite certain how I will do it myself and promised I will not involve anyone else e.g. step in front of train. One thing no one has mentioned is I do not wish what savings I have to be used to keep me merely existing in some painful hell hole when I can no longer manage for myself. I want my dc to have them and to use the money for joy.

@Roystonv - same here wrt savings. I want DC to travel the world or build an extension or go off and do an MA in some subject they love. Not waste thousands a week to have some poor sod on brutally long shifts and minimum wage wipe up after me.

Cowbells - yes! Agree with every word.

And the things people think are important just beggar belief. I had one auntie say of another one, who was in a care home - "She refuses to get her hair cut, what shall we do?"

I was speechless.

I am not sure that activities give my life much meaning anyway. Difficult one. For me, what distinguishes life is learning - I'll know I've finished with life when I no longer want to learn. But what does it matter what I've learned if I don't pass it on? So at the moment I'll settle for enjoying myself, which I do. Punctuated by periods of depression when I know that I'm pretty worthless (I'm not depressed at the moment, so I'm not seeking reassurances. It's just what depression does, sucks all feelings of value out, and disguises it as an objective view)

One thing no one has mentioned is I do not wish what savings I have to be used to keep me merely existing in some painful hell hole when I can no longer manage for myself. I want my dc to have them and to use the money for joy. Absolutely! Keeping me alive against my will, and making me pay for the privilege. The words "Keeping her safe" uttered in connection with care homes chill me to the marrow.

@Roystonv “ One thing no one has mentioned is I do not wish what savings I have to be used to keep me merely existing in some painful hell hole when I can no longer manage for myself. I want my dc to have them and to use the money for joy.”

This is what my DM wanted, and is what I would want. Sadly if you get dementia but are physically healthy, you’re f**ked.

if you get dementia but are physically healthy you become a cash cow for an eldercare facility :(

In my experience age wipes the memory of any intentions expressed when younger around expectations of care or wanting to go. I think there is a strong survival instinct that can make those we care for and about selfish and self centred despite them having gone through the same with their own relatives. I also think that old age comes more rapidly than we think. At 40 you may feel you’ll embrace it and accept the end but at 70/80 it may feel like you are not old in your head and not ready at all to go.

I agree @Zolrets. My mum always said she didn't want me looking after her, but she just became gradually more and more dependent on me, until I was doing almost everything for her. Her vulnerability made her understandably needy, and you could say, selfish.

I suppose the idea of filling in an Advanced Directive when younger means that even if I get like my mum did, I won't be given treatment (eg antibiotics) that I have said in advance I don't want if I have dementia.

@aramox

I wonder what medical interventions now keep people alive? Is it heart medication preventing fatal strokes?

My elderly cousin had a stroke at home in the early 2000s. It was a deep stroke, but not quite deep enough to kill her outright. She couldn't speak, hear or move independently. She was fed intravenously and her bladder and bowels were 'managed' and she was moved regularly to prevent bed sores. She lived for another 2 1/2 years. One of the nurses who had been a nurse for several decades actually said to me how cruel it was and how in the early years, of her nursing career, some one like my cousin would be allowed to die. Which sounds so much more caring and kinder.