Just to feel sad about the long slow mental and physical decline of old age?

104 replies

mids2019 · 26/12/2024 07:11

Just had Christmas with one elderly relative invite e and it just struck me as cruel life is slowly drained from people as they enter a period of slowly but inevitable physical and mental decline.

This Christmas said relative are a small portion of Christmas lunch and then excuse himself to watch TV with sporadic engagement with the family. I think he's trying but there is just a real feeling that makes her given up. The combined impact of deteriorating physical and cognitive health has made him check out of life; there is no spark. It is just sad to see this; it's death in extrene slow motion and there is no right (if you can fight these things).

Are there exxamples of good old ages as I think just in my little sphere old age has brought only sadness :(

OP posts:

Seeingadistance · 27/12/2024 14:20

TammyJones · 27/12/2024 09:09

But true.
Why bury your head in the sand.
Good health is a gift to be cherished
Anyone can pop out for a daily 20 minute ( I talking about Heathy Younger people )
Avoid smoking , overeating( not at Christmas)
Alcohol abuse / drugs
Drink plenty of water and get to bed at night.
Reduce stress.
All these things affect your health and this will show up in later life.

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My DF's nursing home seems to be full of people who lived healthy and sporty lives. Now, unfortunately, while they are physically fit, they have dementia and are enduring a miserable, confusing and often distressing and frightening old age. It's a cruel reality that for some, their good and healthy living only prolongs their dying.

Seeingadistance · 27/12/2024 14:27

RosesAndHellebores · 27/12/2024 09:33

@Lillixyng in some cases but not all. My grandmother ran the family farm and business during the war years, which included several tied cottages and payrolls. She was an accomplished horse woman (related businesses), drove a car before the war and many a tractor. She worked until she was 72.

She was a quiet but very intelligent and well read woman and spent time at her London home until she was in her early 70s.

Then the early alzheimers started, it was memory and repetition at first. Which worsened, then forgetting how to cook and make a cup of tea, accusations of theft against my dgf and mother. She went out to the shops until about 75 and then needed help because she forgot what she went for or the way home. Shortly after she forgot who we were.

The breaking point was when two policemen brought her home in her nighty at 2am.

To give grandad a break she started to go to respite at a local nursing home two days a week and it wasn't long before she started escaping/wandering out.

The next stage was two weeks in five in a geriatric specialist MH hospital. At that stage she was still walking, endlessly, and could feed herself and drink from a cup.

When she was 81 she was given a place at a specialist nursing home. When she arrived she was still mobile and could feed herself. She was a strong fit woman who barely drank and never smoked. She had no underlying illnesses. No illnesses, no arthritis, no heart conditions, etc.

Her illness continued for another 4.5 years. Not many people actually die from Alzheimers, most die with it. She lived for 4.5 years because mother and grandad ensured there were daily visits. Mother did her hair and her nails and they spent time with her. She forgot how to walk first, doubly incontinent of course because that is forgotten too, then they forget hunger and thirst and how to eat and drink. She drank from a sippy cup with help in the last 18 months and was fed pureed food because they forget how to chew. In the last stages they forget how to swallow.

For the last year she had a special vibrating bed, bought by the family, to prevent bed sores. When she died she was 4.5 stone, aged nearly 86. She lived due to the devotion of her family and her original strength.

Had she seen an animal suffer as she suffered she'd have shot it.

Having read that story, do forgive me fir disagreeing with you. People often have no agency over their decline and death and others need an empathy transplant to be decent.

This is my poor father's situation. He was a farmer - a fit and healthy man who rarely drank, never smoked, had a good diet. Cognitive decline became obvious when he was 80. Diagnosed with Alzheimer's in his mid-80s he's been unable to walk for almost 3 years. He can do nothing for himself, and is starting to lose the ability to swallow. It's horrific, and I pray every day for his death.

RosesAndHellebores · 27/12/2024 14:45

Seeingadistance · 27/12/2024 14:27

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I am sorry you have to go through this with your dear father x

EmotionalBlackmail · 27/12/2024 15:10

Don't forget though that the majority of elderly people don't get dementia. It looks like a lot more if you visit a care home, but that's because only a small proportion of elderly people go into a home, and state-funded people only go once they can no longer cope at home with four care visits a day, which is more common with dementia as they reach the stage they can't safely be left on their own.
Even over 90, only a third have dementia. At over 65 it's 2%. Figures from Alzheimer's society which also shows how to reduce the risk. https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf/factsheet riskkfactors forrdementia.pdf

Some of it is down to luck, eg avoiding accidents, or genetics, but you can definitely improve odds, obviously without any guarantees.

Some of it is attitude. I'm thinking here of 65yo, already been retired for ten years, refused to learn how to send email or use a computer even though they could easily afford one and could access classes for free locally but they don't choose to do that with their time. 10+ years later they're moaning about needing someone to do IT things for them as they can't access the bank, or pay for services online, their world has shrunk but they don't know how to email or FaceTime or WhatsApp which would help them be less isolated.

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