Does anyone else dread old age based on their own parents situation (dementia)??

[WearsblackLoveschocolateAvoidspeople]

I really do want to live to a ripe old age.

However, I don't want to live like my parents. My poor mum bent over with osteoporosis, with a pacemaker due to heart disease, confused to hell due to her 6 year long journey with Alzheimer's and now with the added addition of a breast cancer diagnosis.

Nor do I want to live like my dad who, at almost 83 is actually in great health but is angry, bitter and depressed because he secretly resents my mum's illnesses and says he may as well have dementia because his life is over and who will put lots of pressure on his two daughters (who each have their own health issues) to come round as much as possible (4-5 times a week in my case) and help because he really doesn't want to spend too much of his ££££'s savings and is also stressed at the thought of all the money he's worked hard for (worked until he was in his late 70's) and inherited has to be all spent on extortionate care home costs.

No, I want to live like my 92 year old neighbour (who looks about 70), who still drives, almost jogs to the local shop every morning to get his paper, who has a brain as sharp as a 20 something and seems to be loving every day on this planet.

I know everything in life is just a great big stroke of luck but I watching my own parents suffer has made me so fearful of old age but especially dementia, it takes so much away from everyone involved, it truly is the thief of joy.

Thank you x

Do you have close friends?
I remember when I was young in my flat sharing days, it always seemed a bit strange to me that old people don't share flats like young people. I think it would help solve a lot of problems and would be my plan.

Yes I agree, that’s something we’ve joked with friends about in the past. It is certainly an idea ,

"People who live a healthy lifestyle ARE less likely to get dementia. "

They're also less likely to die of anything else. It's likely to be grim at end of life. It's much harder to support elderly parents if you live a long way away as well. Wish I had stayed closer.

Many older people, particularly women who had never married, used to share. The generations affected by the wars after which there were many more women than men in particular.

Yep, but as a PP said, it’s still a numbers game with probability- that’s the nature of probability. A fit and healthy lifestyle reduces the risk - no guarantees- that’s how probability works. The more fit and healthy you are, the less likely you’ll get heart disease, dementia, etc. No one ever said you won’t get it. Just as no one ever said the unfit and unhealthy will get it. It’s the distribution curve.

Just like some smokers and drinkers live to 100 - the vast majority don’t. Just because you know one heavy drinker and smoker lived to 100, doesn’t negate the statistical facts that they’re an outlier.

Yes, when it comes to dementia, very robust physical health may be a mixed blessing. Because she came from a large and long-lived family, my DM often said that she came from ‘good stock’.

So having already had dementia since her very early 80s, she recovered very well and quickly from a broken hip - so often the beginning of the end - at 90 or 91. The anaesthetist who covered the op apparently said, ‘Boy, this is one tough old bird!’
She went on - with advanced dementia - to 97, and TBH a swifter end would have been much more merciful.

There’s no way we want our son giving up part of his life to care for us. He’s left home, moved to a different city, starting in a top career. We’re not going to hold him back just so we’ve got someone to look after one or other of us in old age.

Oh has cancer and he made the decision when first diagnosed not to tell our son as we didn’t want it changing his life plans. 6 years on and son still doesn’t know! He’s living his own life and we don’t want him to make any decisions affecting his whole life based on OHs cancer. Bad enough it’s shortening OHs life and limiting our future and present, but we don’t want it affecting sons future too.

We’re doing all we can to downsize, simplify and plan for our future to be as easy and stress free for son as possible. We’re declutterring the house, simplyiyfing finances, wills and POAs in place, starting to think about downsizing to a pensioner/disabled friendly home, close to amenities etc. We need to do all this when we’re young and healthy enough to make the changes.

We both ended up caring for elderly parents and relatives who were from the previous generations were children were expected to live nearby, woman not to work so they can make meals and look after the extended family. It’s almost emotional blackmail as they didn’t look elsewhere for care, didn’t plan for old age etc., and just kind of expect to be looked after as some kind of pay back. There’s no way we’d subject our son to that.

I’m petrified of end of life when I no longer have anything to offer to anyone.

Despite my posts above, working with older people with major health problems I would say the vast majority are philosophical and independent to a startling degree even at extremely advanced ages. A major helping factor is making some local connections, they certainly don't have to be family members but those who retain some kind of social interest do remarkably well. I have sat with 85-90 year old unable to complete my spiel because their phones keep pinging with texts.

That's really good to hear. I worry a lot about old age because I have no children and am also an only child, so no nieces or nephews. The thought of being alone terrifies me, but I am absolutely prepared to do whatever it takes over the next 50 years or so to build up a network of people who keep in touch with me.

It’s a hard one. My Auntie died of dementia - I think it was vascular and Lewey Body as she had lived with high blood pressure for years and in the dementia she hallucinated or confabulated a lot. Her health was poor her whole life - she never ever exercised and I remember noticing as a child that she had very thin limbs, no muscle whatsoever. She had IBS, was afraid of eating new foods, was also both fearful and stubborn as a person and wouldn’t go places/ try things. She never married or had children, cared for her mother and lived in the same house (her childhood home) her entire life. She had BC around menopause but recovered; the dementia 30 years later was horrific.
Her sister, my mother, was relatively fit - used to redecorate, do DIY, always gardened including heavy work, and walked miles. She’s 88 now and slowing down from heart failure (two dodgy heart valves) but is cognitively fine.
I do put some of it down to diet and exercise. Exercise is mind blowingly powerful, more so than any drug, particularly muscle and grip strength.
However it won’t always overcome genetic risk or sheer decline in advanced old age. All you can do is take advantage of the chances to reduce the risk.
The Brain Docs (the Sherzais, US neurologists), are very interesting on this and on lifestyle. Genes are a much lower component than we think for dementia - obviously important but not the only factor.

@Kendodd children don’t have to become hands on carers but, failing them or other family members stepping in, someone has to organise things - from applying for benefits, making and attending medical rdv, paying bills and keeping an eye on finances, etc.

DFIL isn’t physically in need of any care but increasingly he just does not have the mental acuity to deal with life admin and finances on his own. He can’t operate a smartphone or computer. DSIL and DH are gradually taking on many of these tasks on his behalf. I can’t think who else would do it for him if they didn’t. Carers can be engaged to sort his food, medication, toileting etc but it’s harder to find someone to check the mail and reply accordingly, to sort out problems with the bank, to get repairs done on the house, to keep track of medical appointments and sort out transport.

I'm going out one of two ways, dementia or more likely cancer.

All my family members on both sides of my family died from cancer, with the exception of my nan who died at 94 from dementia. Genetically, I take after my Nan much more than any other family members.

But, in my heart I know it will be cancer.

It’s almost emotional blackmail as they didn’t look elsewhere for care, didn’t plan for old age etc., and just kind of expect to be looked after as some kind of pay back.

But this is how humans have organised themselves and lived for hundreds of thousands of years, this is how we evolved as a tribal, communal species. It's only in the last couple of generations, and only in some countries, that we've started to value our very important individual lives, where we prioritise our own desires / wishes / wants / needs over any obligations? ties? duties? to our parents and other older relatives.

Yes, by today's standards it was a shit deal for many, especially for women, and it's no surprise many people want to live differently now. But that was the deal - they look after us and we look after them, so it goes on down the generations. It's the current situation that is the aberration, the new paradigm that we don't know how to live with yet. Personally I think humanity is going to disappear up its own selfish, self-important arse one way or the other, but hey ho.

Of course, we didn't actively keep people alive long beyond their natural span in the past either. That's another factor that makes caring for older relatives something that no one wants to do.

Statistically it's not luck.

We mostly die of lifestyle diseases.

Of course there are exceptions but people with healthier lifestyles live a lot longer on average. (Also genetics)

I know you acknowledge this in your last paragraph but people didn't live as long in the past and were more likely to succumb - or be allowed to succumb - to physical ailments at an earlier age.
Plus women didn't work as universally as we do now and professional jobs were less demanding hours wise.

I don't think we're selfish- just knackered.

I was a GP's secretary a while ago. There were still patients at the surgery who had had children with disabilities right up until the late 70s who had been offered referrals to admit the child to an institution almost from birth.

My great grandmother had some kind of mental breakdown aged early 40s soon after WWI and went into a nursing home for another 30 years. She was visited about twice a year.

An early job with the NHS in the mid 90s and there was one of the old big asylums being closed, with just a few residents left. Some had been there for decades and were completely institutionalised.

Perhaps we forget the media scandals there were in the 80s about the old long stay hospitals, where huge numbers of beds were racked into crumbling buildings with staff of extremely variable skill and minimal oversight.

There used to be geriatric wards and cottage hospitals which were effectively nursing homes, with very long admissions by UK modern standards - months and years. And when my mother was born there were still workhouses, sometimes with older people there.

None of these things are good! But they show that the idea of a golden age where everyone was cared for well at home really, really isn't accurate.

Family care can look great. But again in my job the very worst situations I come across now tend to be family 'care' that is nothing of the kind. Burned out, exhausted, unwell, addicted or simply incapable 'carers', long term financial, physical and/or emotional abuse, codependency of multiple kinds. You still might prefer it to supported living or a modern nursing home, but it often isn't pretty.

I do think we need to be very clear about what families taking on all live in care would really look like. It would certainly solve the 'living too long' issue.

I should say, I am not planning to provide any sort of hands-on care for family members at all - in fact I'm often on here advising people to set firm boundaries in that respect, and stick to them - for their own sake!

My point was that family / based care of older (and younger) relatives is what we evolved to do over thousands of years - it wasn't good or bad or 'golden', it was the most evolutionarily successful strategy to adopt. Medical advances over the last century or so have completely changed this, extending life way beyond its natural end point for many and completely changing the terms of the 'they cared for us, we care for them' deal. We invest our time and energy in children because they take our genes forward into the future. We have in the past invested some time and energy in caring for our elders out of love, respect and duty - but these motivations are hard tested when the time spent caring extends from 1-2 years, to 5 - 10 - 15 - however many years as it does now.

It's not just in one direction though - I
care for you as a child, so you care for me when I m old.

There was some research done on why humans (women!!) survive past menopause, which is unusual in the animal world. Most species reproduce, rear their offspring to perpetuate their genes, then die. It's thought to be different in humans because grandmothers then played a part in rearing the next generation along too. All those "it takes a village" comments about women having babies, are pretty true. It's really isolating having a baby now - I had no family support because my DM wasn't interested and there wasn't anyone else - in the past I'd have had hands on support from an array of [female!] relatives so the work of caring for babies and toddlers and caring for the elderly was shared out - and the elderly would be involved in keeping an eye on the youngest. Plus the incredibly frail and dependent elderly simply wouldn't have still been alive.

Pre-industrial or more primitive societies weren't all that nice to elderly people anyway - think of the story of the person with dementia tied to a chair outside so they couldn't wander off or soil in the house. Or the tribe that runs off leaving behind anyone too incapacitated to keep up so they die.

I do feel like I "contracted out" for the support I didn't have having a baby. DD's nursery was utterly amazing in the support it gave to families. And I see care homes/care workers in the same way. We now pay for the support we used to get at either end of life.

And family-based care was selective in the more recent past of about 100 years ago. Families still had many children and caring for the parents would be the role of one daughter. Who wouldn't be allowed to marry. I know someone who had to do this and who died recently in her 90s. She had wanted to marry but had been denied permission.

But those daughters often then inherited the house (if it was owned) or were the responsibility of any brothers for support.

This could explain some of the goldenballs siblings out there!

“I know everything in life is just a great big stroke of luck but…”

this isn’t true. There are huge amounts of things you can do to reduce the chance of ending up like that. Being a healthy weight, exercising regularly - with resistance weights and cardio, as well as keeping your brain sharp will make a big difference.

too many people live unhealthy lives and there is a big correlation between that and a rubbish old age.

Our DM is the only one in her originally quite large family ( parents and siblings) to have got dementia. Then again she’s the only one that got past 80.

@rickyrickygrimes you're absolutely right of course.

People also had bigger families usually living close, so the burden of both care for elderly and care for children was shared amongst more people. For some periods" of time it was the norm for women not to work outside the home so they were available for caring.

Now people have fewer children and are more fragmented due to the way our top jobs are concentrated in a few big cities. Most people work and a woman already juggling a career and childcare can’t also juggle looking after a parent with dementia.

Completely different way of living.