What to do with older people unable to care for themselves.

[BenThere]

And in Ben There's case, absolute avarice..

NO Caco, there was no avarice in my case. I had nothing to gain. My observation was that the cost of preserving a life that had functionally come to an end was questionable. I loved my father and would have done anything for him. But he came to his end. Collectively our society paid that $140,000 for his last few weeks. My sister and I deferred to our mother to decide on the second surgery. The doctor had told us there was little hope of survival, and less hope of any recovery. She couldn't let him go and we went ahead. He died a few hours after the second surgery.

Your characterization of that as avarice is nasty and cruel.

[Cacophonix]

And in Ben There's case, absolute avarice..

NO Caco, there was no avarice in my case. I had nothing to gain. My observation was that the cost of preserving a life that had functionally come to an end was questionable. I loved my father and would have done anything for him. But he came to his end. Collectively our society paid that $140,000 for his last few weeks. My sister and I deferred to our mother to decide on the second surgery. The doctor had told us there was little hope of survival, and less hope of any recovery. She couldn't let him go and we went ahead. He died a few hours after the second surgery.

Your characterization of that as avarice is nasty and cruel.

You are a mean man Ben, and you and I both know it!

You value cost above care, life, love and all that goes with it. Everything for you is a graph!

You will die wealthy I guess...

Caco

[Alisoncc]

As an aspie I make no emotional claims to compassion, empathy or understanding, just pure logic. I started this thread commenting on a nursing home located next door to a major hospital in Florida with 115 "bodies" in varying degrees of decay. With the staff most probably waiting for each and everyone of them to breath their last in order to free up another bed. A news article went on to say there were hundreds of such places throughout the State.

That's what we do with old people these days. Park them somewhere to be fed and cleaned by most likely the lowest paid employees available. Abuse of the elderly is a regular news item in most western societies these days. Most of us do better with our pets. Many of us here might be considered to be in the twilight of our years. Is the above what we would want for ourselves?

If a government or religious run clinic "The Centre for the Dying" were to offer a service where you registered entirely of your own volition and after a suitable period - say three months, you were able to return. On doing so and completing the necessary paperwork you would be offered a few pills, a glass of water and left alone to make peace with your God, I would have no hesitation in taking it up. When, and I mean when, I choose to do. You would need to attend in person, unattended - so under no external influences, and family and friends could only be present once all the preliminaries are sorted.

Alison

[Cacophonix]

As an aspie I make no emotional claims to compassion, empathy or understanding, just pure logic. I started this thread commenting on a nursing home located next door to a major hospital in Florida with 115 "bodies" in varying degrees of decay. With the staff most probably waiting for each and everyone of them to breath their last in order to free up another bed. A news article went on to say there were hundreds of such places throughout the State.

That's what we do with old people these days. Park them somewhere to be fed and cleaned by most likely the lowest paid employees available. Abuse of the elderly is a regular news item in most western societies these days. Most of us do better with our pets. Many of us here might be considered to be in the twilight of our years. Is the above what we would want for ourselves?

If a government or religious run clinic "The Centre for the Dying" were to offer a service where you registered entirely of your own volition and after a suitable period - say three months, you were able to return. On doing so and completing the necessary paperwork you would be offered a few pills, a glass of water and left alone to make peace with your God, I would have no hesitation in taking it up. When, and I mean when, I choose to do. You would need to attend in person, unattended - so under no external influences, and family and friends could only be present once all the preliminaries are sorted.

Alison

Oh, Alison get over it! I mean, ****, if you purposely pop your clogs, who will run this site? Who will pay and run this site! Don't be so shellfish!

Sides, I (not that I am selfish at all) have grown to like you.

[bbvideo=560,315]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQSmfR1_SVE[/bbvideo]

Sides, if you **** off and selfishly die who is going to protect me from the name Shellfish Wahabi

No **** night tripping honey. You suffer with us!

Caco

[Alisoncc]

Probably a good twelve to fifteen years ago I had the opportunity to speak with one of my favourite writers and theologians, John Shelby Spong. He is a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church, who has written much on the need for the church to move on from our tribal days to encompass the needs of modern societies. I could well imagine "Centres for Dying" being run by such people.

Alison

[Cacophonix]

Probably a good twelve to fifteen years ago I had the opportunity to speak with one of my favourite writers and theologians, John Shelby Spong. He is a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church, who has written much on the need for the church to move on from our tribal days to encompass the needs of modern societies. I could well imagine "Centres for Dying" being run by such people.

Alison

Who knows when we should die? I had an accident so bad that I told those responsible for my fate to allow me to die, the pain was so awful. They didn't listen to me and I am here to irritate you! We will all know how to die but never give up. Embrace life, it is all we have this side of eternity! Fate is our hunter...

Caco

[Alisoncc]

Caco, Caco, Caco, I note your current age in the side panel. Will you still feel the same in twenty years time? When your Doc says your need to get more exercise - try a brisk walk everyday, and your knees say "No way". When, like me, you gaze longingly at your classical guitar remembering the music you once made, but your fingers are no longer under your control, so you play recorded music.

The mere thought of ending up in some "nursing home" to be fed and cleaned by someone on less than the minimum wage. When visited by daughter once every six months and not know who she is. No, I intend to die with my dignity intact, at a time and place of my choosing. Hopefully it will be a long time from now, but it will happen.

Alison

[Cacophonix]

Caco, Caco, Caco, I note your current age in the side panel. Will you still feel the same in twenty years time? When your Doc says your need to get more exercise - try a brisk walk everyday, and your knees say "No way". When, like me, you gaze longingly at your classical guitar remembering the music you once made, but your fingers are no longer under your control, so you play recorded music.

The mere thought of ending up in some "nursing home" to be fed and cleaned by someone on less than the minimum wage. When visited by daughter once every six months and not know who she is. No, I intend to die with my dignity intact, at a time and place of my choosing. Hopefully it will be a long time from now, but it will happen.

Alison

Damn it Alison, you need love, care and attention! If push comes to shove, I will **** come and look after you. You can hate me!

Not Ben's $ death graph!

Caco

[BenThere]

The mere thought of ending up in some "nursing home" to be fed and cleaned by someone on less than the minimum wage. When visited by daughter once every six months and not know who she is. No, I intend to die with my dignity intact, at a time and place of my choosing. Hopefully it will be a long time from now, but it will happen.

I'm on your page, Alison. Life is fatal, and I don't want the last years to be in a miserable state, struggling for breath, incontinent, feeble-minded, etc. I'll take the quick heart attack and avoid all that. I've had a good ride and if it ended tomorrow I would have no complaints. In fact, I'm anxious to learn about the afterlife, or if there isn't any, I'm comfortable with the long, deep sleep.

The day before my mother died she was telling my sister about her sister, Irene, and what Irene was telling her. Irene had been dead for years. My sister asked if she had been speaking to Irene. Mom said, "Yes, she's sitting right here". Mom was never given to hallucination, and she wouldn't have said that if it weren't so, unless in her last hours she was delusional. I think there's a good chance of spiritual salvation and afterlife, but I don't know it for a fact. We'll see, won't we?

Once again, Caco, you are inane.

[Cacophonix]

Once again, Caco, you are inane.

Nope, I am alive and therefore can countenance, puss, pain, ***** and complaints...!

I don't believe in an after life by the way but, if it be so, I will happily be wrong!

Caco

[Pontius Navigator]

I am where Alison said Caco will be in the future if.

I had cancer in January and just finished chemo. Everyone says how calm I am, No, just positive, no worries mate.

OK, I get a little tired after an hour or too gardening but that is more due to an occupational back injury, Alison will know where. All told cut the long grass in the orchard, collected the wind falls for compost, repaired the bridge (now that was testing with my knees) repaired a gap in the fence.

I don't intend to die for another 15 years at least. My father smoked and drank and died at 71 (passed that), his father died at 73 (passed that), my great great grandfather died at 93 to I have some way to go for that. His father only made it to 87. The next two only made 72/73 but the next, b1688 made it to 87. After that one early death followed by another 73 year old.

I have set a goal and that is my target.

[Pontius Navigator]

Care homes make no more money by keeping an inmate alive. There are few empty beds and a seemingly endless supply to follow. Likewise the NHS in UK has nothing to gain by prolonging life as again there is more than enough work for them with waiting lists over 18 weeks - an operation is cancelled and the clock restarted.

Private health care for end of like treatment for ordinary people is rare. The ones who are most hit by health care costs are family.

I tend to side with Alison here, our children already have a hill to climb in moving onto and up the housing ladder. To ask them to take a step don and fund our end of life care is wrong. My father didn't need care, my aunt didn't need care, may maternal GPs didn't need care. While the media hype up the increasing cost of care homes I knew of only one near relative who went in to one. He was expelled for anti-social behaviour.

[Pontius Navigator]

The other time bomb is the start of life care too. My wife, as a midwife, said how certain babies were so badly deformed and with no potential for a meaningful life that they would be allowed to die. They weren't killed but there was no attempt to prolong their fragile lives.

With improved medical skills and practises previously non-viable babies survive. They are adored by their parents who are frequently in there late 30s early 40s, and cared for for the rest of their lives. Some will die before their parents and many wont. What is to become of them then? We have a couple near us, devoted parents but they can never go out as a couple or a family. They look very old themselves. The chap who services my car, his daughter is very pretty but brain damaged. They can only go on holiday in a motorhome and they can never leave her alone. What of her when either dies?

Nothing is so sad as a little crocodile of such poor adults being guided and escorted by two or three minders. We see them on short cruises too, often 2 carers to one adult where the local authority has sent them on holiday.

[probes]

... cost above care...

I don't agree either, Caco. Maybe it depends on your experience - having spent some time in a cancer clinic with me Mom (and at home afterwards) it really seems to me the pets are treated better when put down when their organs have shut down. And think about the man who was paralyzed and the court denied him the freedom of death.

There is no price on a human life. Period.

But, RGB, as posted before - is life just about breathing and having carers?
Plus, think about the 'human Kens and Barbie-dolls' or 'reality-celebs' who are encouraged to turn their life into a farce for cash. Or media that gives the audience for brutes to post their slaughter-videos.

[Octopussy2]

BenThere, we don't often agree, but I just wanted to say I understand and empathize with the situation you had with your father. I was in a similar situation - loving someone and yet understanding that they have come to their natural end are not mutually exclusive. It was much harder for my mother (not helped, I think, by the guilt she felt because she could probably have prevented the accident which led to my father's death), but I could see that it was time for him to go. And aside from my children, he was the person I have most loved, ever.

[rgbrock1]

There is no price on a human life. Period.

On all seven billion of them. Get real. Or does your "no price" only apply to WASP's - White Anglo-Saxon Protestants? or whatever it stands for.

Should all individuals in hospitals deemed brain dead be kept alive in perpetuity, because some religious fruitcake cannot accept that they are effectively dead. Does carrying out hip replacement ops on someone who is so infirm as to be unable to walk or carry out simple tasks even with the op make sense?

Religious fruitcake? Humans don't decide what, or who, is dead. God does. And if you don't accept, or believe, that - you do so at your own peril.

[rgbrock1]

Oh *f*ck*, just close your eyes and shoot them. Moral abnegation and cowardice is so much easier than love and care...

And in Ben There's case, absolute avarice...!

Caco

Oddly, Caco, we share the same outlook on this. Hurrah!

[rgbrock1]

And in Ben There's case, absolute avarice..

NO Caco, there was no avarice in my case. I had nothing to gain. My observation was that the cost of preserving a life that had functionally come to an end was questionable. I loved my father and would have done anything for him. But he came to his end. Collectively our society paid that $140,000 for his last few weeks. My sister and I deferred to our mother to decide on the second surgery. The doctor had told us there was little hope of survival, and less hope of any recovery. She couldn't let him go and we went ahead. He died a few hours after the second surgery.

Your characterization of that as avarice is nasty and cruel.

As much as I respect you, my friend, putting a dollar amount on the life of a human being - assuming that is what your underlying definition is above - is despicable.

[probes]

Humans don't decide what, or who, is dead. God does.

Does he? Once again, what about the tiny babies, born too early and not ready to live yet, kept alive, risking lifelong disabilities? What about the brain-dead? Dead or undead?

...putting a dollar amount on the life of a human being...

But it's there, like it or not. Even for the richest societies - not everyone can get the cutting edge treatment. As for the poorest - the amount might be very low, like that of uncontaminated drinking water.

[rgbrock1]

Humans don't decide what, or who, is dead. God does.

Does he? Once again, what about the tiny babies, born too early and not ready to live yet, kept alive, risking lifelong disabilities? What about the brain-dead? Dead or undead?

...putting a dollar amount on the life of a human being...

But it's there, like it or not. Even for the richest societies - not everyone can get the cutting edge treatment. As for the poorest - the amount might be very low, like that of uncontaminated drinking water.

Tiny babies, born too early? You mean like my first son who was 2 months premature and weighed all of 4.7 lbs. at birth? Funny how things turn out, eh?

Or maybe we should just decided who lives, and for how long, and those who don't "make the grade" are simply lined up against a wall and shot. Would that be better?