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?

I agree about'let me go' . I would want that for myself and my loved ones.
I don't agree that care homes generally keep residents alive for the money. Many people trained in medical and care settings are taught to preserve life at all costs and some are fond of their clients
and find it too hard to hasten death.

people don't understand that DNR only applies to not giving resuscitation ie CPR and similar. It has no effect on other treatments, although these can be covered by an Advance Directive written by the person or of course a Health and Welfare POA

My relative was 98, had been in the home about 6 or 7 years when she developed a small suspected skin cancer. She hated any sort of outing, let alone a hospital trip because of toileting and mobility issues, but still the home and the GP badgered and badgered about getting this tiny lump removed. She still mostly had her marbles but was of the generation that did what DR said…in exasperation on day she asked the GP how long till the lump started causing issues, “oh in ten year or so” she was 90 bloody 8! She lived another 6mths or so, and when she was end of life and in pain and distress they were most reluctant to administer the good stuff as “it’s very addictive you know”. If we’re not going to allow AD, and the politicians don’t seem keen, there needs to be a massive improvement in palliative care and the willingness to stop treating and make people pain free and comfortable.
My parents died young, before Harold shipman, I looked after them at home which was doable as i was young and no kids, and they both had short sharp cancers - 6weeks from diagnoses to dead. They were given a syringe driver when the pain got too bad and never woke up, I think that was so much better than the months/years of suffering that I’ve witnessed people going through in recent years. Just because we can keep someone alive, doesn’t mean we should.

I don’t have POA for his ‘health and well-being’ as he didn’t think it was necessary when he had full capacity and he was more concerned about sorting the financial POA instead.

I would expect the GP to have a sensible approach to his long term meds and review what is necessary and what isn’t at his particular stage of life.
He’s on very strong antipsychotic drugs for his dementia, apparently these are mostly prescribed in secure mental health units and he came close to being sectioned in the first few weeks of being in the care home as he anger/ aggression was so bad.

I’ve never seen his doctor and that’s another issue. Why is there not a holistic approach to his care involving his family?

Statins and blood thinners are surely not really in his best interest any more but when I raised it some time ago the very thought of removing them was met with horror by the nursing team.
I was told once someone is on those they never come of them. Seems madness to me!

That's appalling! Absolute madness.

When I was working for the NHS (in a non-emergency setting) in 2009, the local nursing home brought in a patient who had been born in 1906! I just couldn’t get my head around that. It was a dermatology clinic and the woman had some pre-cancerous lesions on her face. So definitely not an emergency! Surely there comes a point when non-emergency treatment like that isn’t continued?

Ime there really isn't. I have a 5 hour drive next week then a 2 night stay with my 89 year old dad who's having a shoulder operation. He's in a wheelchair with only one leg can't walk, has severe arthritis and his memory is failing yet doesn't qualify for a social care funded bed in a care home. He has no idea what the operation is and shouts abuse at me if I ask. I'm mid 60s my dh knocking 70 and the long distance care us taking a severe toll on us but what is the option?

I havent read the whole thread (sorry!) but I quite agree that there is often a mission for the care home to keep very elderly people alive with no quality of life.

Apparently only 4-5 % of people end up in a care home yet we ALL know someone who went to one. Both my parents did. Dad survived nearly 4 years in one. Mum much much less but they are for the very frail and certainly neither of them wished for this sort of life. They were ready to go much much sooner. Mum begged to die. In the end I spoke to the GP and said we cannot prolong this. We agreed that no further inventions. Life will take its natural course. No hospital visits and endless antibiotics.

Mum would fall, stay in hospital for 10 days where every test under the sun was done. She was visited by a psychiatrist at over 90. She said she was depressed and wanted her old life back. It was truly heartbreaking but there is a cost to all of this for the rest of us to fund.

For those who say they would rather stay at home even if they are wandering the streets, please don’t do this to your poor DCs. You may think you’re independent and able to make your own decisions but sadly the world feels differently. Funnily enough every single old person I have come across who wants to retain their independence seems quite happy for that to be at the cost of their middle aged DCs lives.
Are care homes perfect and do they perhaps extend lives further than they need to - no and possibly, but I don’t know what the alternative is.

God yes! So many elderly people shouting to everyone that they are fine or secretly telling the medical profession that they have a daughter who will do everything for them (and not telling the daughter!).

My Mum told everyone she was living very indepenently whilst constantly calling me. I had her post delivered to me because she got worried about it, had POA and basically ran her household. She also gave my name and number out to everyone and at work I would get a call from a random person wanting to speaking in great detail about something. You can never call these people back...

I had a grandparent enter a nursing home at age 83 and die at age 99. Yes - 16 years.
When my dad received the call from the care home to say she’d gone to bed and not woken up the next day, literally none of us could believe it. My dad did not shed a tear. And he was a lovely man. He’d just lost her so many times when she was alive, there were no tears left to fall when her body finally stopped.

Exact same experience here. It’s exhausting being the sole carer when the parent puts all effort into creating a false narrative that trips you up constantly. It’s like living hell in a twilight zone.

I do get annoyed as well when elderly people and even people in their late 60's wont get with technology. Neither parent had a mobile or PC EVER!

My late Father got in a real mess with ordering his prescriptions and got so enranged he wrote to his MP! He wouldnt use anything online.

They never seem to have an issue continuing to drive though. We literally had to take the keys off parent and sold the car. He was that dangerous.

My grandma had a heart valve replacement at 89 - I was quite shocked she survived it and that it wasn’t a risky op.

My ILs have almost daily medical appointments in their 80s, either at the GP or hospital. They call it their part time job. Their wall calendar is so busy.

My dad is 86 and has been in a care home for the last 4 and a half years with vascular dementia. He’s long forgotten who we are and is almost never awake. He can’t talk, walk or do anything for himself. Each time we see him he looks that little bit older, so sad really. I just hope I go a lot quicker even it if means a shorter life…this just isn’t living..

To be fair - sometimes it’s not exactly addiction but more the possibility of morphine toxicity they are worried about - I have seen people in absolute terror having awful hallucinations from the wrong dose of morphine. Plus also constipation and various other miseries. But this is what good palliative care via specialists or good GPs should be there to manage (and they do, when given the chance).

I would absolutely hate this and wouldn’t bother going. Some treatments leave with you with a much reduced quality of life which doctors rarely disclose to patients beforehand and once the box has been ticked that they’re cured you, no one wants to know about debilitating and long lasting effects.

I know a number of elderly parents of friends who love to go to the GP and who take shedloads of medication. One has paracetamol via a prescription because she takes 4 a day. One knows the key words to enable her to get an urgent appointment. My DM used to want to go to GP to allow her to go back to her 60’s. Every week she would regularly ask me to make an appointment for her with of course me taking her.

I didn’t ever make an appointment. There was nothing to say bar the fact she was very elderly and didn’t want to be.

We are quite a long way short of being geriatric, only just 70, but DH already has a 20-year deep medical history, thanks to surviving a major heart attack at 50. He recovered extremely well, and has continued to run a very profitable SME business for the 20 years in between. But to do so has involved three periods of intensive surgery and recovery at about 10 year intervals. We are in the process of retiring but DH is the institutional memory bank, so his "consultancy" role is going to be giving useful advice for the people who will take the business forward. Happily he has a memory like an elephant and can dredge up details.

It is simply brilliant at emergency and acute care. It fails at elective and chronic needs, but in our local major city (Plymouth) there is a good plan. We have a big campus hospital, a specialist eye infirmary, several private clinics and a medical school on the outskirts of the city, that seems to be well served by buses. And a huge diagnostic centre is under construction on a derelict site in the run down end of the City centre, that has or will have capacity for 90,000 appointments a year, at the hub end of the bus network. Tests, scanning, routine biopsies, MRI scans etc will be moved into the centre of town leaving the acute hospital to carry out the treatment needed.

I'm not awarding credit to the politicians yet. This has been a very long time in the planning so giving one administration credit would be unfair. But if it works as planned, I think it will be a model for other cities.

Of course, standardised electronic medical records and accessibility will be central to tying it all together. It won't work as well if people with hold consent for data sharing.

I am not sure in which country do you live in but in the UK everyone, even the 100 old dear dears are treated with respect and given basic health care

some very appauling content on this thread. MN sleeping or indeed, contributing to the devilish agenda ??

Just the grownups discussing real life situations sweetie. And basic healthcare is always provided to everyone even the 'old dears'. If you don't understand the nuances surrounding active treatment vs palliative care for the very sick and elderly then perhaps this isn't the subject for you.

Why do you use infantilizing and ageist terminology. Calling older adults old dears is extremely patronising. It's people like you that make me hope I don't live to old age if this is what I can expect. Quite honestly I'd give someone a good hard slap if they did this.

My DF died suddenly in his early 70s. He had just booked flights overseas for a big trip as he was (seemingly) healthy enough to do so. My DM is late 80s. She sits all day slumped in front of the telly, barely able to move and unable to prepare meals or hold a proper conversation. Her mother lived similarly to 98. I know which I would prefer!

I know a number of people (mostly over 65) like this. Many are on 12-20 different types of meds. All on repeat. I do wonder if they are all needed.