Guardian article today that might resonate here

[thedevilinablackdress]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/mar/28/burden-of-extended-care-for-aged-parents-new-phenomenon

I agree with so much the author has written because I know the "seemingly time-unlimited duty" and then "I woke up one day with the most complete feeling of creative liberty and personhood I’d ever experienced."

However, I think she's seeing it with me me me blinkers on. She says the suffering is worse for her than her parents who are elderly and ill (wait until she's in their boat) and her grandparents popped off happily without burdening her own parents unduly (she was young at the time, she has no idea what they went through). It's all a bit 'bad things only happen to me and my generation.

My grandparents did live with us, they needed care, my grandmother was 'senile' as it was called then, my parents had to keep her safe 24/7 and sat with their parents as they died. Death perhaps came quicker but treatments were often brutal and the suffering of parent and adult child no less. The burden on the adult child is not a new thing.

What strikes me is how unhappy most elderly people are who are just existing in a crumbling body, being kept alive with medications.

I know a range of elderly people, some in their 80s and still active but many just exist, sitting in a chair for most of the day. It's not a future I want but how to prevent it?

Yes, but care homes are obliged to give residents nourishment. I started my own thread on this topic last week actually - they weigh residents regularly and put them on weight management programmes if they're underweight, which means those drinks. I think it's insanity personally. We seem to be hellbent on defying and overriding nature.

I really do think the whole ‘prevention meds’ thing needs to be looked at for people once they get to a certain age and I for one have no intention of going on Statins and blood thinners because of my experience.

I think this is really interesting. My parents (79yrs) were of the generation that almost automatically were prescribed statins, blood thinners, cholesterol meds etc. - basically to reduce the risk of heart attacks etc. At the time it seemed like a no brainer - preventative medicine is a Good Thing. But it's only Good if it is going to extend a high-quality life - not just avoiding a natural death. We are terrible at talking about this. I encountered it with my SIL, even at the end she was still hoping that MIL would 'rally' - for what? To resume her bedridden, no communication, doubly incontinent, 'life' being shuffled from bath to bed to chair, ad infinitum? I just can't get my head around that.

Even as she was actively dying, my MIL was being offered fortified drinks.

I completely agree with this.
I'm in my sixties and want to live as healthily and actively as I can (I work on that A LOT) for as long as I can. Then I want to spend the day working in the veg patch, have fish and chips and a very large sherry, pick up my book and fall asleep forever. I'd rather do that at 75 or 80 than rumble on like my nan who spent a decade bed bound, confused and in pain and eventually died aged 104.

The resistance to euthanasia is hard to understand if you've seen the alternative.

That just sums up how lunatic the approach is.

Agreed, I'm going to look at this this week. I'm only in my 40s. The parents and inlaws are mid 70s but this process has begun.

FIL would have an ambulance out every other day if he could - he has terrible health anxiety, but he's had has several very serious problems in the last decade (heart attack, sepsis, spinal cord compression requiring massive surgery) and lives with deteriorating COPD.

DM has osteoporosis, regularly breaks random bones including her spine and now has poor mobility. DF has had a hip replacement and also has kidney issues after a lifetime of alcoholism.

It's a fucking mess already. I've had a long chat with DB to tell him I'm disengaging right now from being the family fixer and I don't want him to pick it up either. I'll support from afar, but they are a 12+hr drive from me and 6hrs from him, and we cannot pop in to pick someone up off the floor / make dinner / find missing items. They chose to move back to that part of the world away from us so that's on them.

Totally agree. I'm overwhelmed with the burden of what is to come with my parents. DF getting bad with dementia but taking about 20 pills a day which he doesn't even know what they are for, plus numerous pointless hospital appointments.

I remember the frustration of trying to negotiate Cahms to get a diagnosis and mental health support (which turned out to be non existent) for my son, who was 8 and banging his head off the wall at school while my DF cost the NHS thousands repeatedly having long and short hospital stays to keep him alive but not able to move, communicate or use the toilet.

I think the third time we were told he was at possible end of life I went in to find him getting hooked up to a drip and being treated rather than just being made comfortable and letting things take their course - it was so frustrating I could have screamed. He went on for another four years of medically prolonged barely-alive. He wouldn't have wanted this.

By keeping people alive well into very old age we're crippling medical services for everyone else.

I wish the Assisted Dying Bill had gone through here and it would have saved other families going through what we went through, for years.

I agree with you and have two very personal experiences of close family members in the situation of your Mum being the carer in late 70s/ early 80s and it was the fit and healthy carer who had a catastrophic incident - one died instantly of a heart attack and the other had a massive stroke and was hospitalised, immobilised with brain injury and died 3 months later.

The natural consequence of ‘advances in modern medicine’ is keeping a bunch of separate organs ticking over whilst the brain and musculoskeletal system degrades and dies beyond their natural life and a lucrative but poor quality system is built up to rinse individuals of their assets and dignity.

It’s part of life.

I think it's more difficult than it sounds and there isn't much of a system for withdrawing treatment. if you're likely to die (DF had a perforated bowel that would have killed him if untreated) you need to get the living will in front of the staff before they treat you. If your next of kin would rather keep you alive then they'll just let you get treated.

Also, my DF had a living will using a template provided by a charity, but it was so badly written it was impossible to figure out what he did actually want. He'd said repeatedly he just wanted to die when he became incapacitated, for years, but I think my DM had made him change it later when he really wasn't of sound mind. The living will was more concerned with orchestrating many relatives at a bedside death scene than in what circumstances he didn't want to be treated.

It would have been helpful if we'd gone through it before he got really ill but I'd trusted him to be able to write the wishes out in a coherent way and not change them later.

We have lost three out of our four parents very suddenly without having to provide any care. I have my 88 year old dad and am the only one locally so I know it will all fall on me but at the moment he thankfully needs very little support.
I work with older people and a large part of my job role is visiting them to assist with financial things, benefit forms etc. The vast majority are lonely and miserable and living with multiple long term health conditions. families if they have any are often abroad or miles away and they don't want to bother them. A lot of calls we get to our charity are from frazzled families who are at the end of their tether trying to sort things for elderly parents who have made no practical changes or financial provision for their old age and then get to crisis point.

What I've noticed, since my own mum's death last summer (age 90, struggled for years with vascular dementia- care home situation was a nightmare), is how much my relationship with my brother, her main carer, has improved. It had really tanked in the last 5 years. I feel sad about that because no parent wants the strain of their care to grow tentacles and affect sibling dynamics and relationships, but invariably it does.
I was so relieved when mum died. Contrary to my dad's death 22 years ago, I haven't really cried much for mum. My mourning her is more of a peaceful process... it is softened by a great relief for her and the joy I feel for my brother who is living life on his terms for the first time in years. My poor mother, honestly... vascular dementia is such an asshole of an illness. After so much suffering, she died peacefully and she was happy in her last few days.
I find myself returning to places we used to go together in better and happier days. I don't feel overwhelmed by sorrow. I think grief was something I lived out while she was alive and battling her own mind. Maybe, in her death, I can finally let go of that grief and just remember, cherish what was. She would want that. Any loving mother would want that for the children they leave behind.

I agree about the prevention meds and the keeping people alive thing.

My grandmother died recently at 99, having completely lost all her marbles 5-6 years beforehand. Yet every time she developed an infection or something, the ambulance would be called and she'd be hospitalised with all manner of tubes and drugs pumped into her. Her final illness, she was in hospital with pneumonia, unconscious for several weeks and we were told she wouldn't pull through - yet they tried course after course of antibiotics until eventually one worked and they declared victory so they could discharge her back to the home. Where she lingered, semi-conscious and tube-fed, for another couple of weeks before finally succumbing.

Meanwhile my dad has been steadily deteriorating with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. My mum is his carer (as she won't consider a home and doesn't want carers coming - hoarding) and is constantly fretting about his apparently endless schedule of medications for all the relatively "minor" things, rushing him to the hospital or outpatients for every wince or groan he makes.

My mother is horrified at any suggestion that we could ease off on the cocktail of pills for him. And even more horrified that my brother and I - we're reaching the age (early 50s) when her those of her generation were being encouraged to pop all these preventative magic medications - have both decided we won't be partaking in any of these things.

Absolutely agree. Some of us have 2 generations of elderly relatives weighing on us. 95yr old controlling, emotionally abusive, self entitled 95 Yr old gran who doesn't want to be here but just keep on going! And dad in his 70s who is chronically ill and who has a very poor quality of life! Then there's me who is seriously stressed and worn out. Add to that having kids of my own who need me now and will continue to need me to care for them as adults.

Am I alone in seeing the shadow of Shipman and the subsequent reforms hanging over this? The man was a psychopath, but many doctors prior to him did hasten the deaths of the hopelessly ill and infirm, and acted from a place of compassion.

It’s not strange and I feel the same. My mum died when I was 23 and my dad when I was 34 - both of cancer. Even at 53 I still think of them every day, and miss them so much. They would have been 85 and 83 now. But I do think of what life would have been like if they had lived - I’d be doing my caring now instead of in my twenties. In my head and in my memories they are still 53 and 64.

The one other relief I have is that my brother died suddenly 5 years ago at 46, and I don’t know how I would ever have told them the news. For the first time in my life I was glad they had died early. I think that would have literally killed my mother.

My mother is horrified at any suggestion that we could ease off on the cocktail of pills for him. And even more horrified that my brother and I - we're reaching the age (early 50s) when her those of her generation were being encouraged to pop all these preventative magic medications - have both decided we won't be partaking in any of these things.

I feel EXACTLY the same as you. When you walk that walk with parents who have been afflicted by old age's worst case scenario, you become a card carrying member of the Fuck That Club when it comes to your own longevity.
90 is great when you're a great 90.
90 is a curse when you're a shell of a (double incontinent) human trapped inside a paranoid hellscape of your own mind's making.

Part of me thinks it's big pharma pushing out the pills. It's oddly the same for my very elderly cat. She has dementia, incontenence , diabetes. But I took her to the vet last week and the vet mentioned nothing about ' letting nature take its course' just wanted to punt us a lot of pills. I'm at near the end of my tether and can give her a bit longer. But really, it's near time.

You've got the nail on the head.
Theres a real issue with lonlieness. This could easily be helped if there were better housing options for older people, and they were actually incentived to use them. Better, more affordable retirement developments with space to socialise and support, pre adapted. So much of the narrative is that you are 'loosing independence' but actually you are gaining it!! All politicians and experts say is 'stay in your own home'.. in many cases this is the worst thing you can do. It also mucks up the housing market with oldies living in family sized houses.

The second thing is preparation. On the day you claim your state pension you should be issued with a guide to older life. All the things you need to think about. Most newly retired are more than capable of getting their house in order at that stage.

Then we need to look at financing care. This needs to be made fairer. You shouldn't loose your house and life savings. The cost is a serious reason people resist care, they don't want to loose everything. Dementia care should be free or heavily subsidised.

I read this earlier and it resonates in that I want to move to my forever home and downsize but can’t all the while elderly mother is reliant on me to house her .

I haven't read the article yet, but I know the feeling in the sentence quoted about getting her life back and breathing a sigh of relief. I had nearly 20 years of caring duties, the only child in the family without children and female to boot, so guess who was the assumed carer? Full time job too simultaneously like many others.

Anyway I often wonder if any of us would refuse meds right now (I'm in my late sixties). I won't refuse at the moment, and I'll be really honest and say that as long as I have agency and am compos mentis then I probably still will take what's offered if it's helpful. It's all very fine to say don't medicate elderly people, but I think what is meant is don't OVER medicate them just to keep them alive.

Sorry @TaraRhu but do you think your cat would want "a bit longer"?
I can't help thinking they may not given all the health issues.
I speak as someone who couldn't or rather wouldn't face up to the fact that my dog needed to be pts and she suffered as a result.
I would give anything to change that. It haunts me every single day. And so it should.

With regards humans, I think we need 'good' Dr Shipmans. But how the hell do we get there given what that monster has done and all the pressures on the doctors and the fears they work under of getting sued or struck off or similar?

I do wonder if we need a level of compulsion. As awful as that sounds. But if people, and their families, won't face up to the fact their life is only going to get worse and there is nothing anyone can do for them, and they keep thinking the next doctor or next procedure/test/pill is going to be the one to make them better, what do you do? Not saying it's the answer, it can't be, but what is? But I do think it should be the case for pets and vets should be able to compel owners to pts if the animal is really suffering and there is no hope.

I do think we need a massive rethink about the NHS and I think it needs to provide a basic service and if you want more, you need to pay. I also think doctors need to be given the freedom to be able to be honest with people. But what do you do when that person won't or can't take on the info they are trying to impart?