How long can people live like this?

[HoppityBun]

This might seem callous, but I don’t mean it to be. The thing is, I’m bewildered about how long elderly, bedbound people in their 90s can continue to exist. I’ve got several relatives in this situation. One I know wishes that she had died several years ago: I know because she says so when her children aren’t around. One of the other others, actually it’s hard to tell but she focusses on the next meal, or tea, or sweets, and seems ok. Has a few UTIs and once had a very low breathing rate but was revived. The other, seems to be ok, but at other time seems to be sad and has twice commented that they “just wanted to be all over“.

They’re all in nursing homes, all mid 90s, all bedbound and I just don’t understand how it is that they continue to survive when they are not eating much and not getting any exercise. This has been going on since 2020 for one of them and 2-4 years for the other two.

It seems extraordinary to me and, to be honest, it’s getting family members down. I suppose it’s anticipatory grief, which we’re all warned against.

I’d be interested to know because the way things are going they could all live for another five or six years it seems to me. Gradually declining and getting thinner and paler, but just sort of existing. I don’t want that for myself and I hardly recognise them when I look at them, for the people they used to be. Has anybody else come across this? It’s particularly extraordinary because they’ve lived lives that I would have thought are contrary to all we told about healthy living. Granted, none of them ever drank or smoked, but none took any exercise that I remember. Yet still they are here.

How can the body go on existing?

Fashion can I suggest you get off this thread. You have no idea what the OP is saying. I had two parents like this. It’s horrible. Not for me. I coped.

Was available at a moments notice when there were falls or the care home wanted to pass something over to me but because it was truly awful for THEM.

Try taking that to a logical conclusion.

What about disabled younger people? What about children with learning disabilities?

This is an inhumane path to start treading. Sadly it’s encouraged by the way our economy is pinned to productivity. Any who are considered unproductive are also thought of as a burden.

You have no idea what I've been through and I'm trying to assist with a different perspective from someone who has come out the other side. I'm sorry you've suffered but don't assume that suffering applies to you only because it was managed differently by someone else.

@FashionPassion We are making some people live too long.

Exactly and I find it interesting how, once that fact is brought up, others want the discourse to be shut down. It's hard to look at the mirror when someone challenges the reflection.

@FashionPassion
My nan 'lived' the last 7 or so years of her life sat in a chair in a home

She did not recognise her children or grandchildren, she had to be fed, washed, dressed, in nappies. She couldn't even watch TV. When she died it was a relief that she was out of her misery.
The body in the coffin wasnt my nan, it was just a shell, the person my nan was had long since gone.
My mum is going the same way.
I will not let this happen to me. I do not want life at any cost.
I'm 61, I was diagnosed with cancer this year. I am responding well to treatment. However, if I have a recurrence in my 70s, I will refuse treatment and let nature take its course

I completely understand OP. It's not part of the natural way. These people are being kept artificially alive way past the time they should be.

My dad was a living skeleton for the last year of his life. He had repeated urine infections which rendered him insane at times. It was harrowing for us all. Several times we got the call he was dying, we rushed down traumatised to say our final farewells. Only for them to stabilise him.

He hated it, we hated it, and it cost £1900 per week to the tax payer.

Caring for someone who is disabled can become a burden. We can’t pretend it doesn’t affect people.

So you are bed bound. You find no interest in food, you smell because the minute the care home change you you have wet yourself. You cannot go out in the fresh air because you really cannot make the effort.

You are effectively waiting to die and often in pain. You have a miserable existence. And yet someone says that’s fine. Crack on.

Mum had various UTI’s. She was incoherent and answered simple questions with the most bizarre answers. But for some she just needed to take a pill and all her problems were solved.

They're not living or dying naturally though. They're being artificially kept alive.

I saw Digger the movie last night. He's got a 30 year old cat at the beginning that he's selfishly keeping alive. It's got everything wrong with it and is completely miserable.

God its difficult op. Our dad lasted 13 yrs after his stroke. Sometimes a quick death is better. It took a big toll on everyone. Not easy on my mam. Sad when they have no life quality.

Also imagine if they're terrified of death. But what else is coming? So they're being kept artificially alive in a state of extreme physical suffering and mental anguish. All their friends are dead and that's all they have to think about. It's inhumane.

Of course their life is poor, numerous uti’s, bed bound, don’t go out, don’t recognise their own children. Screaming in pain even if they are potentially pain free.

When Mum was in respite there was a lady there who just kept pressing the call bell. Literally as the carer walked away she would press it again. In the end they shut her door and let the alarm go unanswered.

I’ve worked in a care home and I’d definitely agree that some people have a poor quality of life. We’re not talking about a gentle decline but of people who are a combination of immobile / incontinent/ non verbal / blind / deaf. I think when life is reduced to just being toiletted, fed and cleaned by strangers then we aren’t being kind keeping folk going on a cocktail of medications.

My grandfather spent the last two years of his life either in a chair, or in bed. He had panic attacks if left alone, so my grandmother (or a convenient family member) was also housebound for that time. Before that, he had such a social life that he was barely at home for any occasion other than mealtimes and sleeping! My grandmother was very much the same.

She is now 98 and recently started slowing down. She asked years ago that, rather than let her sit in a care home 'waiting to die' (the one nearest their house was known as 'God's waiting room', judging by the amount of people you saw in the windows for years on end), we put her in a tent up on the moors, so that she could die that way, rather than having a prolonged death.

I know that it upsets some people, but we wouldn't let our pets suffer in that way, so I fail to see why it is considered acceptable to do it to people, particularly if they are of sound, independent mind and say that they wish to die.

I completely agree with all of this. It is something I have been thinking about too as I am in this phase with elderly relatives. And actually OP, it is in fact partly because they lived these healthy lives - my medical sibling says they're going to start indulging in everything unhealthy once they get to a certain age because if something like that doesn't get you then you end up with this endless, frail existence as you say.

We seem to think that extending life must be the aim above all things, with little understanding of what that really means a lot of the time.

I agree on assisted dying too, it's incredibly cruel that we make people end their days like this and I actually am so angry at the selfishness of those who have made it about non-existent issues or imaginary pressures that might somehow fall on them even though they or their loved ones would never be candidates. Millions upon millions of people denied a dignified end and forced through horrific suffering due to fears about things which were not even within the bill's scope. I hope desperately that this changes in future.

Ok, I get the point about being artificially kept alive. That, IMO, is wrong because it prolongs suffering for all. But, how are they artificially being kept alive? By machinery? Is feeding them, caring for them etc keeping them alive artificially? The person who was "revived" I can understand would be upsetting, if it was their natural time, but the post doesn't say that this was the case for both.

So, I was trying to understand what the issue is i.e. is it that the other individual wouldn't want to be "revived" or kept alive longer than what would be possible naturally like in the case of the other person? Have they stated that or has the trauma from the other incident caused concern and a shifting perspective.

OP, I'm sorry you're going through this. My great grandmother suffered greatly in a nursing home and I sometimes wonder if the elderly are kept alive for profit. On the other hand, I worry that the elderly are not kept alive for profit. It's a hard road, either way.

My DM has self funded for nearly four years now. She spends the day sleeping, crying or screaming. FashionPassion have you seen the devastation that dementia can bring? The self-educated librarian, from the working class background that my DM was, would be truly devastated by the wretched, bedbound, weeping being she has become. A DNR was agreed 10 years ago.
My DM has not deteriorated since she was admitted to the care home after a fall that had no physical consequences. I cannot imagine what will finish her life. She eats nothing, but sips 3 cups of tea a day. Her continued existence is a mystery.
All respect to the carers, one who held my arm today as I was shaking and crying after seeing my DM's pain.
My MIL had completed a RESPECT form but that was over ridden by the ambulance crew in any case. Thankfully she died at home (aged 95) at home eventually.

This is exactly it!

And yes it's absolutely for money.

Average Weekly Costs (UK, 2026)

• Residential Care Homes: £1,100 to £1,300 per week
• Nursing Homes (with dedicated nurses): £1,450 to £1,535 per week
• Residential Dementia Care: £1,343 per week
• Nursing Dementia Care: £1,564 to £1,767 per week
• Luxury / All-Inclusive Homes: Start around £1,800+ per week

Crunched. - big hugs from me and as a regular contributor on other threads you don’t get that normally from me!

I have seen the inside of far too many care homes and hospitals. My parents didn’t get diagnosed with dementia but there was a lot of memory loss and just wondering why they were still here.

They were both educated independent people and were shells in the end. Mum was barely 5.5 stone and looked like a concentration camp victim. She just wouldn’t eat and yes they did give those energy type drinks but she just wasn’t interested and left them untouched in the last few weeks.

She didn’t need food where she was going and I know now it was a sign she was about to pass. I wasn’t there when she actually died and although I got there within 1 hour of her dying it didn’t look a peaceful passing. Her face was contorted and her eyes were half open. The carer who was with her said she was begging to die.

It's insanely expensive to keep people alive for very little. Perhaps options on the NHS should be limited after say 87.

Just because I’m posting about a dilemma does not mean that it’s up to me to provide a solution. If only there were one. It’s the fact that it’s a dilemma is the reason that I’m posting. You pose an interrogation, but perhaps you had not grasped that the point of my OP was perplexity.

i’m not clear what you think is “not acceptable“ to me. Acceptability isn’t the issue. It’s not up to me to accept or otherwise. I’m looking at frail, doubly incontinent, bedbound people who are very deaf, completely deaf in one case, and can’t see. One is totally blind. They have nothing to do each day. They can’t listen to the radio, can’t watch television; they just lie there. I can just about have a conversation with two of them. But it’s brief, they usually can have virtually nothing and they have nothing to say because they don’t know what’s going on in the world. One of them tries but, funnily enough, she’s the one that I know, because she has said so, wishes that she were not like this and that her life had ended earlier.

I don’t know how to explain that I’m not saying their life isn’t worth living, I’m looking at them and wondering how it is that immobile people can carry on existing like this. How you draw the inference from my question that it is I who think they should not be living like this is a matter for you. I’m sorry if it’s close to home or if you think I’m getting at you, but I’m discussing how it is that people just seem to exist from day-to-day and what is almost a state of suspended animation.

There’s no question of them “coming out the other side“ as somebody in another post suggested. Their mid to late 90s and are in terminal decline. There is no way back. They will not become continent, they will not regain their hearing and they will not be able to regain their sight, and they will not become mobile. That’s just the way it is. It is that set of circumstances that led to my OP.

I passionately believe people should be able to do an expression of wish and state that when they reach a certain state they should be euthanised.

like others on this thread, I watched my dad who was a force of nature end up bed bound, doubly incontinent, barely able to swallow and didn’t know where he was. It was unbearable. If I reach that point I want to be killed. I cannot see what the issue is with that.