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With 4 grandchildren I do. My paternal grandmother lived to see 3 great grandchildren. As long as I am not in pain or severely disabled I want to go as long as I can.
If I could take after may dad who is approaching 91 with most of his marbles intact I would love it. He moved to assisted living because of step-mom's condition and is very happy there.
My mom and her mom started declining around 80 and I suspect that will be my fate. They made it to 84 & 85.
My grandfather and father both died at 79 and 81, my mother still alive at 87 but while still mentally ok her quality of life is not good and basically confined to home and now to an ALF.
So I’m thinking if I get past 80 as the above poster said it will be gravy and certainly do not want to make 90 if it means living with dementia or unable to take care of myself. Quality of life is more important than quantity
I'm not a big fan of extrapolating my likely lifespan based on when my parents died. There are so many differences between how their generation lived and how we do, not to mention individual life choices.
My dad died at age 76 of a heart attack. However, he was overweight, smoked cigarettes, cigars and pipes all his life, was a beer drinker, and ate a diet that could charitably be described as "heart attack on a plate" three times a day. The only exercise he ever got was bowling once a week.
My mom died at age 78 of a heart attack as well, but she was the opposite of my dad: tiny/petite, never smoked, and rarely drank. She ate the same kind of food as my dad but in smaller quantities (two eggs instead of four for breakfast each day, for example). She probably got more exercise, between doing the housework and never learning to drive which meant she walked many places instead. However she was an extremely high-anxiety personality all her life; my dad was very laid back and never stressed about anything. I honestly do think that my mom literally "stressed herself into a heart attack." I mean with her it was practically nonstop 24/7.
Some people might look at that parental profile and think "I probably won't live past 80" but I don't believe that. I don't eat like my dad did, I've never smoked or drank or been overweight, and I do not have my mom's doom-and-gloom the-sky-is-falling personality either. So although my cholesterol is on the higher side of normal, my ratio is good and and I'm happy with my life. My parents were my parents, but I'm me.
(As far as my grandparents go, my paternal grandfather lived to be 73 but my paternal grandmother till 86. My maternal grandfather died at age 43 from black lung disease from working in a coal mine since boyhood, so that's irrelevant; my maternal grandmother died at 81. So I don't extrapolate anything from them to me at all. Their lives were light years different from what mine was and is.)
Health care (diagnostics and treatment) has advanced so much from our parents' time to ours that you have to think how much longer many of them would have lived if today's technology had been available when they were in their sixties and beyond. Even with the unhealthy diets, smoking, and nasty cancer causing chemicals that were around then but not now.
Not to mention the drugs that were prescribed to our parents generation that were later found to be harmful! Anyone remember Dantron (a common laxative), DES (given to pregnant women), Darvocet, Darvon, and Vioxx (pain killers)? The first was found to be carcinogenic, the second messes up multiple organs, and the rest were found to increase the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes. Yet doctors handed all of them out to our parents generation like candy.
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