Care homes make me think people never die

[rockrollerpud]

Recently I was given the news that someone I know died suddenly. Classic late seventies, living life totally normally, seemingly slim, fit and healthy, then gone within 24 hours from heart attack. This was surreal to me. And here is why.

I visit a relative in a care home weekly. And for want of better words, I’ve been visiting so long that I honestly feel like some people can’t die. Or at least, their bodies are just designed to trundle on like a diesel engine car with 200,000 miles on the clock.

Most of them are 80-100 years old. Many sit there all day asleep with their mouths open. Many are overweight, have multiple health conditions, yet they just don’t ever change from that. They go on for years/decades.

I have to say, there are far more women than men in the care home.

Quite regularly, I’ll read on here, that someone struggled at home but then went in a care home and only lasted 1-2 years. Yet I see the majority seem to live forever in the care homes.

Before I knew what I know now about elderly disease and decline, I’d always assumed that by the time I got to a care home, I’d be so spent, I’d only last a few years too. But now it’s freaking me out that I, like many others, could spend 15% of my life in one.

Anyone else a long term visitor to a care home and be shocked at this?

@WearyAuldWumman why were you told to wait another 10 years for surgery for patella alta? Just out of interest wondering what their rationale for delaying stabilisation is as my husband has the same condition and has had bilateral trochleoplasty with MPFL/TTO in his 30's.

Practically everyone decides that. The problem is that if you develop dementia or similar, someone else might decide something different. If people aren't capable of living safely at home and don't have the capacity to understand that, they can be overruled.

I was in hospital for two weeks a couple of years ago. I was critically ill and in a private room on a corridor of private rooms. Almost every other room was occupied by living cadavers which were clearly only being kept alive by medical intervention. I will be making a living will when I get older, I never want to be that person being brought back to life only to be returned to a care home.

My beautiful dad with dementia lasted three months to the day in a home’s dementia wing. We’d all agreed in advance he wouldn’t be treated if he got ill, just made comfortable. He got pneumonia and died 5 days later. We’re all so grateful he didn’t suffer on and on for years as he hated the home (it was an excellent one) and would have been miserable.

YANBU, I would rather just drop dead from heart failure or a heart attack (at 68) than live to my 80s, and be dependent on others for everything, because I am basically immobile and so ill that I can't dress or wash myself or get myself to the loo properly. I also don't want to just languish in a care home, unable to wipe my own bum, feed myself, or get myself dressed/undressed and have to depend on people washing me. Pumped with multiple meds and different 'treatments,' to keep me alive. Existing, but not living..........

I know many people who were in their 60s (some 10-12 years ago,) who were as fit as a 30 year old, going for 5 mile walks, cycling to town and back (8 mile round trip) and playing bowls, badminton, and bingo, and going horse-riding etec etc, who had a nosedive with their health, (maybe a heart attack or stroke for example,) and are now housebound, unable to shower or feed themselves properly or be independent at all - and in some cases, they are a danger to to themselves and everyone else. So they're often shoved in a home.

The amount of people who get to 80 - or more - and are still sprightly and totally independent, are the exception rather than the rule. Most people (IME) have their health start to decline when they get to 72-73... I have seen this happen to sooooo many people. People I knew as healthy and fit a decade ago (in their early to mid 60s) have had to have new hips, and various surgeries for other health issues, and have had strokes and heart attacks, and falls that break multiple bones...

Some are now immobile and dependent on other people to drive them everywhere, and cook their meals and bathe them, and many need carers... Also, (as I said,) some have been shoved in homes, and are just existing... Terrifying to think you can just go downhill like that in your early-mid 70s, and be kept alive for 10-15 years or more after your decline, being pumped with drugs. It's no life for anyone. And I am not letting it happen to me.

Part of the mental capacity act is giving weight to people’s known views before they lost capacity. And social care will insist the only way to meet your overnight needs is a care home but there’s nothing in the legislation that means that they won’t provide 24 care at home. You just need to know your rights and take things to the ombudsman.

This. Additionally its only 5% of over 65s who end up in care home. You are seeing the sieve effect of one end of the scale.

Same. My Dad died recently and while I’m absolutely heartbroken, a part of me is glad that he was himself up until the end.

They won't allow you to remain alone if you're a danger to yourself or others. You'd be deemed not to have mental capacity if you had dementia and were endangering yourself or others.

Are you two reading a different thread to me? People are sharing very deeply personal experiences and discussing an emotive topic calmly. Nobody is showing any repulsion. And as for your conspiracy theories…how we do we know anybody is who they say they are on here?

My friends mum didn’t answer the phone when they rang, so they went over to her house and found she’d had a catastrophic stroke. If they’d been an hour later the ambulance people said she would have been dead. Instead the hospital patched her up over many months and sent her home to live with them with 4 carers visits a day. She’s now doubly incontinent, blind, feeding tube, can’t stand unaided, can’t talk only incoherent mumbling. She’s been like this a couple of years now with no sign of getting any worse or better. My friend says she regrets everyday that she went and found her. Another few hours and she’d have died instead of the living hell that the whole family, but most of all her mum are being put through. Sometimes, modern medicine has a lot to answer for.

My mil late 80’s has Parkinsons and very nearly died in hospital 3 months ago. Dh fought for her and literally wouldn’t let her go. She’s alive but in a wheelchair, doubly incontinent, can’t feed herself and is more or less gone.. but still alive, and might be for the foreseeable. Not a life I would want, and she’s in no position to decide for herself.

I think in some ways people are comforted by the idea that 'doctors try to keep you alive forever' argument even though they say they don't want it. The reality in practice is much more mixed and nuanced. I think the pressure towards euthanasia, active, passive, voluntary or involuntary will increase significantly in the coming years and it may well be a case of being careful what you wish for....

Do you not see that keeping your body super fit, might actually prolong any stay in a care home, should you be unlucky enough to get dementia? Your body would keep going longer then that of the physically unhealthy resident next to you.

I live a reasonably healthy life, but it has occurred to me that I or my family might live to regret that, should my quality of life ever be grim.

@Dontcallmescarface what if you get a diagnosis or Alzheimer’s and your impairment is mild. You can still go out for walks, enjoy time with friends and family, you still cook and shop for yourself, you still do your own cleaning and laundry. But you’re a bit repetitive and you forget things you get told. If you stop your medication (eg for blood pressure, cholesterol) you might then have a stroke, which leaves you paralysed down one side. Your mind is the same, but now you can’t walk or care for yourself in any way. Someone else has to wash you and change your incontinence pads, and lift you into bed. You’d probably have been better off staying on your medication.

Same with my mum. She'd been lying on the stone floor of her cottage, and by the time the paramedics came she was so hypothermic that half an hour more and she'd have died.

At one point she was irrationally angry with the person who found her, because she'd rather have died then be paralysed and physically helpless in a care home for the rest of her life.

What's nasty about it? Have you watched a loved one die year in year out for years on end and weep every day for them because you know if they could communicate they wouldn't want to be alive in that state?

What's nasty about wishing that kind of suffering to be over for them?

Well, we own animals. So we get to make decisions about them on the basis that they have no rights or agency. We don't own our elderly parents so unfortunately we can't just kill them when we'd like to.

Hello, first post on here ever!

I just wanted to say how this made me chuckle in a way, my father passed away end of December 2025, he was 85 (did not act/look/behave that of an 85 year old!) and he was definitely one of those diesel engine types !! (that's the part that made me chuckle as i always said he would go on forever) He sadly was diagnosed with prostate cancer 4 years ago, and he beat it, but due to a lack of communication from his gp at the time, it came back and as mentioned above, passed away. He was in a care home for 4 days before he passed, I really thought he would come home after that, but it was not to be. I think that's where most of the shock is coming from still, I honestly thought, he would never go... that he would live forever! silly i know but he was SUCH a character, It was hard for anyone to imagine him being gone. Anyways thankyou for that little analogy, it made me smile for a moment :) x

Quality of life is more important to me than quantity.

The care home described in the OP is certainly unusual as it seems to have discovered the secret to eternal life. In all the years she has been going there, nobody has ever died?

There’s the thing though @NewspaperTaxis. My advanced directive doesn’t say ‘stop giving me drinks’ but if I have reached the cognitive point where I am not able to decide to get a drink for myself or physically able at least to initiate drinking from a cup in a convenient place, I want palliative care only, including no antibiotics (the two are not the same). I fully accept that that is exactly the kind of statement that makes disability rights activists understandably angry, in that I am stating that needing that level of help makes my life not worth living, and they will point out the risks to life of assuming that everyone feels the same about what quality of life is. And I get that, which is why I don’t actually agree with assisted dying; I just want people to take action for their own futures, and for healthcare staff to be allowed to implement the legal structures that already exist, without the risk of being punched in A&E or sued.

Ideally I'd be healthy to something like 80, 85 max, and then die super quick. A long extended period in a home or with dementia is a hideous thought. Its why I dearly wish that euthanasia was legalised.

No idea.
Only knee replacement was mentioned, not stabilisation surgery. I believe that the latter is only offered by Spire Edinburgh round my way.

No mention of it at NHS Fife.

I suspect that the problem is that he was looking at an obese 64 yr old female teacher- he did ask what my job was.

I’ve since lost 2 stone. Can’t afford the Spire, so I intend to work on further stabilising through exercise and trying to lose another two stone in the hope of being taken more seriously. I’m 5ft 8 and current BMI is a whisker off 30.

My impression - based on what I’ve heard from others - is that surgery in Fife is more likely to be offered if you’re a man in a physical job or playing football in a Sunday league.

The consultant also told me to use OTC painkillers. Can’t decide whether he’s patronising or whether I look particularly thick.

@rockrollerpud Have you been to an emergency room recently? I've been twice in 2026 (my son managed to first break a bone and then getting an infection from the plaster. Anyway both times 90% were elderly, many lying down moaning and most of them looked more dead than alive. I asked my brother who works at the hospital and he says care homes regularly send in elderly people because there is no doctor onsite and can't be reached. So they come in all confused, lying for hours sometimes days because of triage. And he said roughly 80% are elderly in the emergency room. It's one thing treating someone with life quality but treating someone with dementia who is very confused is very hard and that person would be better off having stayed in the care home being seen to there by a doctor when available.
I've written DNR if outcome might be a vegetative state. That's my worst nightmare.