Bias towards elderly who will not go quietly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would say they haven't experienced a close relative living as a vegetable. Meaning feeding tube, laying in bed, staring at the walls, no commuication, hell, no brain function. Huge medical interventions that lead to nothing but back in the bed, staring at the walls with more tubes and more meds.

We spend more in the last months of life than we do the rest. For me, pull the damn plug and let me go in peace and with dignity

My aunt was in a nursing home and had a DNR. The DNR was not with her when the ambulance arrived (she stopped eating). So, in this case, she’d already decided she no longer wanted to love. The hospital treated her and she loved another 12 years in a home in a mostly vegetative state. It was very sad because she’d been a lively person who was in her bed.

[Anonymous]

I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Absolutely terrible thread title, BTW.

Agreed, it is a disgusting title.

I am an attorney who changed careers and have been working in mostly hospice care for the last near decade. The majority of my patients have been elderly, but some were DNR based on chronic degenerative conditions at younger ages.

I’ve noticed that the majority of doctors are just as uncomfortable as the average person with having conversations about death. They may be more matter of fact about it in their own thinking, but they don’t really want to talk about it with patients. There is a lot of avoidance of spelling things out plainly to people who are avoiding accepting it themselves. Even some doctors and nurses who work in HOSPICE, whose jobs are all about helping dying patients die, sometimes push too far to keep people on the alive side of things even if it means prolonging discomfort.

I can’t agree with your OP at all, not the ugly thread title. The truth is that the situation in American medicine is overwhelmingly the flip side of the coin - we spend astronomically to keep people alive in the final years or months, and often causing much anguish in the process for patients and families alike. All because we can’t talk about death in this country and most folks are terrified of it.

As to your parents OP - this is a well tread area of medical ethics and not some ageism bias of the doctors. When patients are in their 80s and beyond, they are statistically much less likely to fully recover from many procedures and treatments - exponentially less likely than a patient in their 50s, 60s, or even 70s. Same with their statistical likelihood of experiencing complications which hasten greater disability and/or death.

This factors into the physician’s determination of what is in the best interests of the patient, and no doctor is required to perform a surgery or treatment on a patient if they feel it is going against their best interests. Some doctors are skilled at explaining this and others just hem and haw and avoid flat out saying how things are. It has nothing to do with a lack of caring about your loved one. I would argue that there is more caring on offer from someone who nudges you in the direction of recognizing your impending mortality than in steering you toward further denial.

The patient alone determines what is best for them. Physicians may be learned intermediaries but they have no right to decide whether a patient gets treatment or not. They have a duty to explain all options and the likely results of each. If they can’t do that, they should switch to pathology.

Not everyone who resists being “nudged” toward the beyond is in denial. Some just have more hope than the people doing the nudging.

No, patients don’t dictate their care. You can’t just order a doctor to do this or that, if it’s not medically indicated. No wonder so many people are leaving the medical field. You think you can boss them around like they’re your nanny.

While medical arrogance may know no boundaries, it is the physician’s duty to explain options and associated prognoses. Failure to do so is prima facie negligence. What is “medically indicated” is a matter of opinion, and patients have a right to have that opinion and the grounds for it made clear. Hiring a physician to provide services does not create a custodial relationship where the physician holds the power of life and death to be exercised at his or her caprice. Oh, and I don’t “think” I can boss the Great Exalted around, I know I can, and I do.

Ooh, big talk. Sorry, no doctor is going to perform any procedure that they think is unjustified. Well, maybe your shitty one, but then you have a shitty doc. So there’s that. And I’m laughing at you thinking you know better than a doctor what’s medically indicated. Where did you get your MD?

They may not know more medically but they sure as heck know a lot about how doctors view, value, and correspondingly treat their Black patients.

There was no indication that race was an issue in the PP's ego-driven piffle above. They're just pounding their chest on the internet.

No. But what I see in this thread is a lot of “doctor knows best” comments. And those comments are invariably made by people that foolishly believe that doctors would treat an elderly Black woman with the same dignity and deference they give an elderly wealthy white man.

There is a comment up above about how doctors die. Well, of course doctors have better deaths. They can trust their colleagues to give them the right care. They can trust the system, and they can trust that they will be given appropriate care when needed and not when it’s excessive. They believe in the system, and really, why shouldn’t they? Do you know how much better treated doctors are by the system throughout their lives? It is shocking, the difference. They have an entire lifetime of getting preferential treatment by the medical system. Why should they not trust it at death?

But most people aren’t like that. They can’t trust the system. And so, they will never have deaths like doctors, because they have to account for a system that simply doesn’t value them the way it values its own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

You are an extremely selfish person. Do you plan to end your life before 70 so you are not a burden on your kids (or anyone else for that matter)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

You are an extremely selfish person. Do you plan to end your life before 70 so you are not a burden on your kids (or anyone else for that matter)?

I read it as the writer not wanting to still be a caregiver when she/he is 70. This is a recent thing that retired seniors are still looking after very old parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Geez, who cares about *possibly* resentful medical staff, when your own child is cursing your existence.

Your piss poor attitude doesn’t come from your parents. God forbid, they want to eat ice cream and watch birds.

I'm sad to say that isn't what we are talking about. Intervention is great when it leads to birds and ice cream.

Unfortunately -- and I don't mean this flippantly -- there aren't any windows in the ICU, and they don't give you ice cream through a tube.

WTH -- OP didn't say they were both living in the ICU or mention the ICU at all. And, you did mean it flippantly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

You are an extremely selfish person. Do you plan to end your life before 70 so you are not a burden on your kids (or anyone else for that matter)?

I read it as the writer not wanting to still be a caregiver when she/he is 70. This is a recent thing that retired seniors are still looking after very old parents.

There is no law obligating you to be a caregiver to anyone. It's a choice. There's a lot more decency in saying, "I don't want to be a caregiver" vs "I hope my parents will die, so I'm not a caregiver."

[Anonymous]

My dad waffled between DNR and full code the last few years of his life (he had several co-morbidities). We met with a palliative care nurse who explained how violent CPR is, there was a 98% chance he would be on a vent, etc. His neurologist also told me that if I had to make an end of life decision for him, to follow his pre-dementia instructions. About a month ago he became septic & was admitted to the ICU. He was treated with medication but I did not allow the doctor to shock his heart when it stopped. I miss my dad terribly but I don’t regret my decision. Helping him have a (relatively) peaceful death was the last thing I could do for him as a daughter.

[Anonymous]

Everyone should read the book “Being Mortal”. It addresses alot of this issues from multiple levels. It was very helpful when I was dealing with elderly relatives.

[Anonymous]

I have one employee that is age 70 and working full time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

You are an extremely selfish person. Do you plan to end your life before 70 so you are not a burden on your kids (or anyone else for that matter)?

I never said everyone should end their lives before 70.
But yes I have a DNR though I am much younger than 70.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

You are an extremely selfish person. Do you plan to end your life before 70 so you are not a burden on your kids (or anyone else for that matter)?

I read it as the writer not wanting to still be a caregiver when she/he is 70. This is a recent thing that retired seniors are still looking after very old parents.

You are correct.
I also have a DNR and you bet I’ll have one at 70!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think everyone over 80 should have a DNR. Possibly even earlier.
I mean I get it, my dad wants to live to 100, but I don’t want to be stuck caring for him at 70, no thank you! And any old person needs a certain amount of care and oversight.
Also I’d rather go through the pain of losing him at 55 than 70 tbh.

You are an extremely selfish person. Do you plan to end your life before 70 so you are not a burden on your kids (or anyone else for that matter)?

I read it as the writer not wanting to still be a caregiver when she/he is 70. This is a recent thing that retired seniors are still looking after very old parents.

There is no law obligating you to be a caregiver to anyone. It's a choice. There's a lot more decency in saying, "I don't want to be a caregiver" vs "I hope my parents will die, so I'm not a caregiver."

Yeah right. I am gonna say: dad sorry I am too old, you are on your own, bye. You bet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have one employee that is age 70 and working full time.

They might even be caring for their 90+ parent, no surprise there

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have one employee that is age 70 and working full time.

My parents, at 70, were running a business full-time and traveling the world. Sold the business when they were 78 and now are in their 80s happily traveling between their full-time home, their second home, and their kids' homes as well as taking other trips for reunions or to visit friends. Are they going quietly into the night? Ha. They're more active than many 65 year olds. They're kicking a$$ and taking names, and we fully support it.