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?

Your sentiment didn't need the first sentence, it's clear from it that all you care about is the financial aspect, not the quality of life.

It’s up to relatives who have P of A, to decline life saving or life prolonging treatments , if they don’t think it’s in the person’s best interests. I have done this for an aunt in her late 80s, with dementia, who was refusing food and drink after the umpteenth UTI. The GP agreed that treatment was not in her best interests, and I knew that letting her go was what my aunt’s former self would have wanted.

I’ve done this with my 75 year DM with advanced Dementia. She’ll never go to hospital , receive treatment for cancer or a stroke etc.

The situation is much more difficult when the elderly person has capacity.

@EveningSpread totally agree.
As a society we really do need to think about how people age and death as a package. It comes down to quality versus quantity in my view.
I still regret allowing myself to be persuaded to let the consultant fit a pacemaker to my elderly (91) mil who was already in a care home with advanced dementia. Caused her a lot of distress and prolonged her life to a point it wasn’t a life (not that it was much being in a home anyway), just a being existing.
There is a good reason pneumonia was known as an old man’s friend.

There's some nasty stuff on this thread.

Here's a review of "The Experiment" on Channel 4 which I haven't seen became I'm in Australia, but possibly you can see it in the UK. The review is detailed. Its premise is looking at the extent to which ordinary people can be influenced by Nazi ideology, While the subjects are disabled, by any reasonable definition, so are the elderly in this thread.

Some posters on this thread need give their fucking heads a wobble.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/oct/21/the-experiment-channel-four-tv-review-uk-nazi-disability

Are you proposing the state should euthanise them?

I will have an advance directive to have no antibiotics, no vaccines and no assisted feeding if for example I have advanced dementia or similar where my quality of life is poor. Then I will die naturally of infection most likely with only comfort care. This is how to prevent the situation of elderly people languishing for years in nursing home, but the individual has to have given prior instructions with proper medical and legal involvement m. I’m quite sure many of us who are witnessing this now with our parents generation will make damn sure that it doesn’t happen to us.

The Liverpool path was tried. It meant that elderly sick people were starved. Not only medication was witheld but also food. No quick injection which would be preferable. Luckily the Liverpool path has now been discontinued.

Problem is nobody is allowed to pass away peacefully anymore. They become ill, get blue lighted to A&E to spend 3 days on a trolley in a corridor, pumped full of antibiotics and sent home for more misery. Once upon a time the frail and the elderly would be tucked up in bed, kept comfortable, pneumonia would set it and the end would come. Now it seems that they need to be kept alive at all costs. 30 years ago a very elderly person breaking their hip would be the end.
A 96 year old frail old lady who I knew, broke her hip, admitted to hospital, hip replacement and she was dead inside a week......

I wonder how many will actually do it, have you yet?

@AncientBallerina this is what I’ve done and had written into my h&w poa.
I have decided I won’t be continuing with any health mot/testing etc the Gp decides either.

Apologies not read the whole thread. Too busy dealing with my elderly mum, my own home and my young adult! My mum is 91. Has suffered failing body health (osteoporosis - early menopause, like me. Why do they not tell us of the bone risk!) But OK mentally. Forgetful, but not dementia. Independently living with limited support. But effectively housebound, unless with major support. That was OK, until this year. My sibling died unexpectedly and then a few months later Mum admitted to hospital with delirium due to an infection. Now out, clearly improving as being awkward about ongoing care. Her friendship group of similar age jest it is due to the war diet and rationing. There are so many of them, female in their 90s, but from different locations and backgrounds I think it must be true. My mum has said clearly following the death of my sibling she no longer wants to live on, and has agreed to a DNR. The hospital asked me what I thought after she agreed ( she has capacity in general). I also agreed, she's had her life, some of it better than other times, she can't bear the restrictions on her life, but refuses a care home. So here we are, plodding on.

Ved, I couldn't agree more. I am late 60s and stopped all cancer screenings more than 10 years ago. I'm still working, travelling, dog walking and gardening but I've seen extreme old age first hand, and life prolonged with endless antibiotics, and the rest. I'd rather go in the next five years than that.

Why is everyone talking about antibiotics?
It’s the heart medication, surely

I indirectly work with care homes and pharmacies and FIL is almost 98. Personally I think more pain relief should be provided. So many elderly people with such low quality of life, it makes me so sad for them. The weekly medication for them is delivered in multiple carrier bags, they are keeping pharmaceuticals happy and we are prolonging life, but what is it for if someone is doubly incontinent, has dementia, unable to eat solids and can't move. We should be having discussions on our choices in old age now. Don't wait for it to happen and then it is out of your control. I will be refusing vaccinations, medications and do not resuscitate orders in place if I get to that point. Nobody would choose to live like that.

I just looked it up and it’s almost like 100% of people in their 90s taking some sort of heart medication whether it’s a blood thinner or high blood pressure pill

My mother had a DNAR. She had declined heart surgery when she had capacity. When her heart was failing the care home asked us if we wanted them to call an ambulance. We said no. The nursing team attended, put her on a morphine drip and she passed away peacefully hours later

@ved same. Just no to the lot of it.

I thought the poster you quoted meant when life becomes a burden for the person, and they have had enough, not the person becoming a burden on others.

They’ll just gradually stop eating and then pass away probably. That’s what happened to the last very elderly person I knew and it wasn’t for want of trying to get her to eat. My mother in law would make her delicious meals but she would pick at them.

Medics are so pushy though. There’s a presumption that you will opt to have life saving treatment and they are often quite aghast when you say no.

A relative of mine went into a nursing home, ostensibly to die. He’d decided on no further treatment beyond pain relief, forms filled out, home onboard, wife onboard.

Once he started going downhill there were nurses on the phone at 3am with the we’re just going to transfer him to hospital for some I.V. antibiotics.

This is exactly what he didn’t want so his wife said no but the nurse was incredibly pushy. I think in similar circumstances so many families cave and just go along with what is being presented. Same with Covid/ flu vaccines snd antibiotics for every infection.

Really difficult discussions need to be had in advance and decision smade. I think medics and care home staff should be much more respectful snd supportive of those decisions. Patient’s shouldn't be pushed towards further treatment ( that they’ve said they don’t want! ) and should be supported with as much pain relief and/ or sedation as it takes to alleviate their suffering.

I completely disagree with your characterisation of what's going on here. I've loved every old and dying person in my life, and there's been many, and selfishly I've wanted them to go on for myself, but even I can see when there's endless suffering and just being a body which doesn't do any of the fun stuff in life (see, eat, hear, be continent) it's ok to not want to live that life.

I'm not talking about tolerating older people, that's not what this thread is about at all, it's about being so frail and elderly that when you lie in bed your skin peels off and blisters as it's so fragile, and then prolonging that stage of life with lots of interentions which are entirely against the natural order of what nature would have allowed to happen.

You do you, though and if you want to stick it out as a bed-bound, incontinent, distressed old person with cognitive confusion, go at it.

I used to look at my dad when he was in the advanced stages of dementia and wonder what on earth compelled him to open his eyes every morning, and once they were open wonder what on earth went through his head as he looked around and remembered nothing and no one.

I completely agree OP.

That was to @FashionPassion not @maudelovesharold

I need to step away from this thread though, I'm taking it too personally.

My grandmother lived until 97 and could still chat away happily until the last month of her life. She wanted to continue living in her care home and still valued her life.