Group items tagged

>'With unrealistic expectations of our ability to prolong life, with death as an unfamiliar and unnatural event, and without a realistic, tactile sense of how much a worn-out elderly patient is suffering, it's easy for patients and families to keep insisting on more tests, more medications, more procedures. >Doing something often feels better than doing nothing. Inaction feeds the sense of guilt-ridden ineptness family members already feel as they ask themselves, "Why can't I do more for this person I love so much?" >...At a certain stage of life, aggressive medical treatment can become sanctioned torture. When a case such as this comes along, nurses, physicians and therapists sometimes feel conflicted and immoral. We've committed ourselves to relieving suffering, not causing it. A retired nurse once wrote to me: "I am so glad I don't have to hurt old people any more." '

Medical debts of elderly despite Medicare

The chilling dilemma of "the unbefriended elderly," who don't have family or close friends to make medical decisions on their behalf if they can't speak for themselves, generated a bunch of ideas the last time we discussed it. "I would much rather pay a professional, whom I get to know and who knows me, to make the decisions," she wrote. "That way it is an objective decision-maker based on the priorities I have discussed with him/her before my incapacitation." Elizabeth, it turns out other people have been thinking the same way.

Personalized music arousing elderly w/ dementia, ?"locked-in"

I am a legally blind octogenarian. I have wonderful adult children who often help me, but I can never accept their help gracefully. It is a terrible thing to be a burden. They say I am not, but I know better.

I am a legally blind octogenarian. I have wonderful adult children who often help me, but I can never accept their help gracefully. It is a terrible thing to be a burden. They say I am not, but I know better.