Growing old in America

Flipping through People Magazine at the check outline, I saw a picture of Courtney Cox and Demi Moore with the headline

45 is the new 30!. Does that mean that 90 is the new 60?

Let me just say that I am not opposed to

plastic surgery, botox, restylane etc. I just can't afford any of that. However there is something to be said for aging gracefully. We live in a country that sees aging as unacceptable. Wouldn't Priscilla Presley look alot better if she had just aged naturally? This is not a wax figure from Madame Tussauds this is a photo of the real deal.

And what about this picture of Kenny Rogers. These people are in a profession that demands people look young so I am not judging their decision although it certainly may be something they are reconsidering, but I can't help but wonder how this media obsession of youth continues to impact our beliefs on aging and dying. Old is bad/young is good: Message received. Will we be reading headlines twenty years from now: 70 is the new 40 with a picture of Madonna wearing a black leather bra and holding a riding whip. On some small scale we all try with lotions and potions to look "our best" and many industries depend on our vanity and fear of age to survive but wouldn't it be nice if we valued our elderly for their knowledge and wisdom and saw wrinkles and gray hair as their badges of honor instead of things we should dye and inject away.

I have always loved Katherine Hepburn and I think she is beautiful in both photos.

What would you take to the nursing home?

I was thinking about what few things I would take with me if I found out today that I would be moving permanently into a nursing home. Maybe my comforter so that I would feel more at home and a few family pictures, but what about all of the knick knacks and bric a brac that I have collected throughout the years? I don't have anything that valuable but I would hate to see it all sold at a garage sale for a nickle a piece or given to Goodwill. Our textbook mentions that many people transition from a hospital to a nursing home and never get to see their home again and that it is important that they have that opportunity to visit their home and mentally say goodbye. The person may never see their possessions again and having that chance to look at everything and point to their loved one what should be given to charity and what should be sold on ebay would certainly be more comforting to me. Sometimes the person in the nursing home is the last to know that the move is a permanent one. They may have broken a hip and gone to the hospital and then the nursing home or rehabilitation center as it is often called now and the family realizes that the person will no longer be able to live alone and this will be a permanent move. They postone telling the person, maybe they don't want to upset them or they just are afraid to tell them, usually their parent, but eventually the person figures it out. Guess what, we sold your home and all of your belongings at an estate sale. Guess you have no choice but to stay here now. Nursing homes don't have to be sad places. A female client of mine in her 80's is transitioning from the hospital into a rehab center/nursing home for three weeks and she is looking forward to it. She says she really likes the staff there and always has alot of fun. Even in old age a positive attitude is everything. There are some nursing homes opening up now that are based on a smaller family type concept where instead of big institutional settings the homes have maybe 10 to 15 residents and it is not a sterile environment but a home like environment. People can even bring their pets. While I think that is great, most group homes for adults with developmental disabilities are small but they can still be pretty crummy places to live. It just depends on the staff and the only way to get good staff is to pay a decent salary. Something that is sadly lacking in the direct care field.

Dying Well

I read something interesting on the NPR website by a Dr. Ira Byock who works in hospice care. Dr. Byock believes in the idea of life long human development. This applies to people at the end of their lives as well and he points out that the developmental milestones of people at the end of life are remarkably similar to the developmental milestones of toddlers.
He writes, “Someone who is dying, like the developing child, goes through stages of discovery, insight, and adjustment to constantly changing circumstances in his person and in the ways people react to him. People who are dying often feel a sense of constant pressure to adapt to unwanted change.” Each day brings new changes and the world can seem like a very scary place. For many elderly people, their world becomes very small. They may no longer drive or feel physically able to go out. They are now dependent on others to do for them what they could once do for themselves.

More interesting information from the NHPCO webstite:

"The term “hospice” (from the same linguistic root as “hospitality”) can be traced back to medieval times when it referred to a place of shelter and rest for weary or ill travelers on a long journey. The name was first applied to specialized care for dying patients in 1967 by physician Dame Cicely Saunders, who founded the first modern hospice—St. Christopher’s Hospice—in a residential suburb of London."

What is your definition of dying well? For many of us that would mean not dying in a hospital or dying in pain. Hospice care has made that possible and we have Dame Cicely Saunders to thank.

euthanasia

The subject of euthanasia periodically rears it's head; the Terry Schiavo case a couple of years ago and Dr. Kevorkian and his death machine many years ago were all front page stories.

Euthanasia.com lists the pros and cons:

Arguments For Euthanasia:

It provides a way to relieve extreme pain
It provides a way of relief when a person's quality of life is low
Frees up medical funds to help other people
It is another case of freedom of choice

Arguments Against Euthanasia:

Euthanasia devalues human life
Euthanasia can become a means of health care cost containment
Physicians and other medical care people should not be involved in directly causing death
There is a "slippery slope" effect that has occurred where euthanasia has been first been legalized for only
the terminally ill and later laws are changed to allow it for other people or to be done non-voluntarily.

There was a time when I supported euthanasia because I felt that people in extreme pain had the right to choose to die but the idea that it could become a way for insurance companies to save on health care or greedy relatives to collect on inheritances does give one second thoughts. I always wondered why the people who called Dr. Kervorkian couldn't just take a bottle of pills or shoot themselves if they were that hellbent on dying and what did Dr. Kervorkian get out of it? Was he motivated by helping others fullfill their wish to die or something more sinister? With the large number of elderly people and limited resources that we are looking at with the baby boomer generation it is possible that euthanasia could become a way to cull the population? There is a movie,Solent Green, with Charlton Heston that probably only a couple of my fellow baby boomers in class have seen. In the movie, the world is running out of resources and a new food product called solent green is introduced which turns out to be what the old people are being killed and turned into more or less. Should doctors even consider mercy killing considering their hypocratic oath? Isn't that a conflict of interest, do no harm unless the patient is requesting it?





You may be thinking about the option of a living will:

The following site has great information including a blank living will specific to the state of Alabama:
http://www.caringinfo.org/UserFiles/File/Alabama.pdf








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