A sad, but realistic attitude of my elderly neighbor

[Platapus]

I live in a geezer community. It is euphemistically called "active 55+", but it is a geezer community. I have great neighbors.


One of my neighbors who lives a few houses down has a husband that is not well. His health has been deteriorating for many years. It got to the point when he needed 27/7 home care. The wife was confiding in me that they had no idea how expensive this was and it was not sustainable.
Finally, his health deteriorated to the point where he needed to be moved to an assisted living facility. This turned to be slightly less expensive than the home care, but it still costs a lot.


This neighbor told me something sad, but also realistic.


"I hope he dies before the money runs out as I don't know what I can do otherwise."


Yikes!


They have good insurance but there are limits. This made me think of the importance of supplemental care insurance. Medical science can now keep us alive for longer than we can afford, it seams.

It was a chilling conversation.

[mapuc]

Thank you Platapus your story tells me, why we never shall have same system here in Denmark or Sweden
I tell you I'm glad I pay around 40 % In income tax and 25 % VAT of thing I buy- I can rely on help if I should get very ill and need it 24/7 until the day I die.

Edit
The story is very sad-There should not be a limit for how long time her husband needs help.
It should not be based on how much they have paid in insurance.
End edit

Markus

[Skybird]

As a student, for short time I also was stationed in a gerontopsychiatric ward, voluntarily. In those few weeks I learned two important things.

First, on such stations, psychologists can do almost nothign for patients, and focus more on the rest of the family trying to come to terms with the situation, may it be sadness, may it be anger.

Second, the price for "living as long as possible" easily can get far too high, not just financially, but also regarding life quality, and not just for the individual in question, but also for all those around it.

I question this goal of modern medicine: to keep people alive as long as possible, "no matter what". Often, intense commercial interests are behind doing so.

For myself, living all alone and having no family, it is clear for me that I will try to live on as long as my body and mind allow me to live self-sustained and self-controlled and my money is sufficient. If any of these conditions is no longer fulfilled, I then will implement certain final decisions myself while I am still able to do so. To end up in an old people's home and be completely controlled by others and bored to death, that's an absolute horror for me. Maximum punishment. I have lived my whole life alone - and in the last gasps of breath I should suddenly want to wallow in a deportation yard for elder people? No, thanks. When your time has come, it has come, and one day everything ends for all of us. Nothing is to be proven in life and by living as long as "possible", its no sports competition and there are no medals to be won. What it is is a some joy and some pain, and often it is more of the latter than the first. Each of us must decide for himself from what ratio on it is no longer worth it for him. Nobody has to criticise such individual decisions, and nobody has any claim to make regading what the other's decision should be like.

All living is suffering, said Buddha. But he also showed how to end suffering. Not to cling, and not to want to confuse the impermanent with the imperishable. Because most of the suffering arises from the fact that we want to make the perishable everlasting and we then cling to it. Necessarily, this gives birth to existential disappointment, without exception, every time. We do not suffer because the world is not in order - the world just is what it is, but we suffer because WE are not in order.

[Aktungbby]

Having worked security in large 1000+ well-regarded senior home facilities, replete with alzheimer wards of hospital-smocked dementia-zombies in Depends shambling around all night; still living persons erroneously placed in the facility repository to await the undertaker...while still breathing, and having placed my demented parents in similar facilities...the horrific situation is to be avoided utterly so as not to become a burden to others...by whatever means necessary. Several elderly persons I've known have opted to remove themselves, ie: refusing any medical attention, refusing food, or simply placing a plastic bag over their head...What, with Covid, global warming, breakdown of social order, pending WWIII...and the estimated/predicted end of civilization, ca 2040, worrying over a lifespan is hardly a priority.

[em2nought]

I'm going up on Everest to join green boots. I'd wear Trump boots, but then I'd surely get desecrated by some democrat who made the trip just for that spiteful reason

[Platapus]

Wow, way to make this story political.

[August]

I watched my father spend his last days in a retirement home and when my mother started deteriorating from Alzheimer's my wife and I brought her to live with us.

It was a tough road but a couple of years later she died peacefully at home in the arms of her family and not in some stark and lonely hospital ward with that terrible antiseptic odor or death and human decay, surrounded by strangers.

With no children of our own Rose and I may not be able to escape that fate, at least not the one who goes last anyways.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Wow, way to make this story political.

Costs aren't sharply rising magically by themselves so...

[Jimbuna]

Lost my father-in-law to Alzheimer's at the ripe young age of 59 and I've instructed my family to put me away should they experience a similar situation...not pleasant at all.

[mapuc]

I'm so sorry for having derailed this thread into politics.

It was not my sincere intention to do so, it was just after I read Platapus sentence

"I hope he dies before the money runs out as I don't know what I can do otherwise."

Reading this made me remember all the terrible thing I have been told and shown about the American health care system.

That's why I mentioned our tax and VAT system. It may be high.

My Mom 82 years old is living in some care home apartment. She can make her own food, which she does a few times per week or she can eat with others. She is in need of medical assistanse 3 times per day and she get it-She doesn't has to worry about any health insurance.

Markus

[Commander Wallace]

I'm sorry that our older citizens have to worry about these things as they enter their twilight years. Trying to decide if they are going to buy food, meds or keep the lights on is tragic.


I won't have that problem as my birth certificate has an expiration date on it. It says, " don't use after this expiration date," Just like one would see on old milk.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I live in a geezer community. It is euphemistically called "active 55+", but it is a geezer community. I have great neighbors.

Originally Posted by mapuc

I'm so sorry for having derailed this thread into politics.

Markus

Not to worry. The OP started right off, however unintended, being political with "geezer community" and insurance insufficiency concerns vs relentless corporeal entropy which R always politically charged issue(s); particularly where Social Security is paid into by younger laborers for the benefit of the longer lasting "old geezer" generation...This being Labor Day, I thank all the young laborers for puttin' in to my $972 monthly stipend; ie: the only 'retirement' I collect since age 62; having finally retired at age 69!...only to get requested back into service at 71, just a month ago!!? (And Medicare keep$ increa$ing) I doubt it'll be there for them when their time comes.

[August]

So there was one post with a political comment and a half dozen more (and counting) discussing the propriety of it. Which is more disruptive to the supposed topic do you think? The one or the half dozen?