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Somehow this thread went in a totally opposite direction from what I intended :-). I think I should have asked what would people do, how would they prefer to spend their days, if they ended up in a LTC facility for, say, 30 years.
Oh hell to the no. I'd last 3 days or maybe 2 weeks at most. That alone would kill me.
What I am preparing myself for is possibly a few months of hospice totally drugged (which is the only way institutionalization is ever going to happen).
The stats show people spend around 2-3 years in long term care (end of life).
MY FIL died a few months before his 100th birthday. He was in good health and excellent cognition. He lived alone in a adult living community and occasionally dined with residents. Unfortunately, the residents including his female companion eventually died off so he spent more and more time alone in his apartment. However, he maintained his interest in life including sports, politics and other people. He decorated his apartment for Christmas every year. We enjoyed his company and his dry sense of humor. We miss him.
So, in answer to your question, if I could bring joy to other people's lives and had only minor health issues to deal with, I would be fine living as long as he did. I enjoy my own company and want to be part of my husband and daughter's lives so long as I could bring happiness.
It is difficult to fathom living 30 years in a LTC facility as neither my parents nor my in-laws have done so. I imagine a life of solitude in my home with aides and will give my daughter power of attorney to spend down my assets for this purpose.
That sounds good! One of my grandfathers also died a few months before his 100th bday. He lived with my parents, who by that time were also in their late 60s and retired (the other three grandparents died earlier; his wife/my grandma, born the same year as he, died 9 years earlier at 90), he was in excellent health (except stone-deaf, started losing his hearing pretty profoundly around 90), until about month and a half prior to death. He walked about 5 miles every day (this was in a large city in Europe) til the end. He got online (the Internet just started expanding at that time), and wrote endless mails to family members, since he could not talk directly and particularly not on the phone due to deafness. His main complaint was boredom, ie, all friends and acquaintances were dead, and the modern times did not interest him (other than e-mail :-). He was not a reader. He clearly loved just wandering around the city, probably remembering events that happened at various places in the city 50 or 90 years earlier.
I don't exactly know what I will do if my end is likewise very prolonged. It boils down to what neurologic capabilities will be left vs. damaged. If everything continues functioning, then it is a no-brainer - I would continue all I am doing now, except that at some point I would have to stop traveling. I am also a long-distance walker, so I would continue wandering in the city for as long as I could move. While it is not fantastic to be deaf, I would greatly prefer that to being blind - it is far less disabling, plus I AM very much a reader, I cannot imagine losing that. At some point I tried to learn Braille (I really want to be prepared for anything! :-), but it seemed impossible. People say that it is easier to learn it if one actually really can't see. If I lose both vision and hearing, that would be really tough - in that case Braille would be truly indispensable.
Re living in a care facility, my main hope is in fact to avoid getting too much care. I don't like people bothering me with all kinds of "services". Even if I stay at a hotel for extended time (which I did a lot when I worked in places remote from home), I would hang a sign on the door to not disturb (which stayed on the door until they called from the reception to say that the room cleaner had to change the bedsheets at least once a month :-). I could see surviving with very little help even if I were densely paralyzed and incontinent. I would just need someone to bring me books and food (which does not need to be even particularly prepared, I don't care, I could live on cheese sandwiches and fresh fruit), and to throw away the trashbag with diapers (I imagine that, even if I were half-paralyzed as it happens with strokes, I would still prefer to change that diaper by myself, and give myself an equivalent of sponge bath with baby wipes, using my remaining functioning arm and hand). I would just dread a possibility of being awaken every hour with some scheduled "activity", the way they do it in nursing homes; that would be unbearable. I don't care for scheduled activities any more, unless I schedule them myself.
Oh hell to the no. I'd last 3 days or maybe 2 weeks at most. That alone would kill me.
What I am preparing myself for is possibly a few months of hospice totally drugged (which is the only way institutionalization is ever going to happen).
The stats show people spend around 2-3 years in long term care (end of life).
Two years average stay, five months median stay (ie, half of the people stay less than 5 months, and half of the people more than 5 months).
Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
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I do not want to spend my last years in a long term care facility. I also don't want to outlive my children. I only want to live as long as I can doing the things that I love, with the people that I love. Living for the sake of breathing, or simply existing, just doesn't interest me.
I only want to live if I have a purpose, however I choose to define it.
Supposedly there are more adult diapers in the landfills than baby ones. Yech.
I imagine these super-oldsters are surrounded by family so have lots of involvement with them. Telling stories like you said. Sitting and watching the world go by.
It sounds terrible to me but I won't have to worry about it. No desire for it and that's not in my genes. Or budget, lol.
Hey, listen, when I was a kid I loved to read more than anything. I'd play outside with the neighborhood kids for a while, but I always needed time to myself to read. As weird as it sounds for a mother to say, my mother would yell at me for reading too much and always having my nose in a book, lost to the world. So, i took my books and went into the woods behind my house to hide and read. There were these viney bushes that formed sort of a tent, and I'd find a spot under one and read for hours with no one being able to find me.
Years later I reflected on the oddity of my mother getting angry at me reading, and I realized that it was probably a carryover from being annoyed with my introverted father, who spent a lot of time reading and playing solitaire. My mother craved huge amounts of attention and was very social, but Dad was not, and she must have resented his reading and saw it as some kind of rejection of spending time with her. Years later when I found myself living with her again, I noticed that she could be silent while we were in the same room until the moment I picked up a newspaper or magazine, and then suddenly she had something she had to tell me. At that point I just laughed about it.
My mother took care of my dad, who had a disability, and she helped take care of her sister, who had CP and was mentally disabled as well, when my grandmother got too old to do it on her own. Then after her sister died she took care of her mother. After my father and grandmother died, my brother became terminally ill ad she cared for him until his death. She also helped me by caring for my daughter after school while I was working.
And then, in her late 70s, when she had no one left to take care of but herself, my mother started going to the library and coming home with stacks of books and sitting in her recliner and reading, reading, reading. She read all sorts of books, fiction and non, and she often recommended books to me that I enjoyed. The week before she died at 91, our state had begun to shut down due to COVID. By that time she was on dialysis, was four years after a quad bypass, and needed a walker to get around, so she spent most of her time in her recliner. To her horror, COVID shut down baseball right at the beginning of the season, and as there was nothing else that was any good on TV, she asked me to bring her some books, since she had run out of things to read. I brought her a pile of books I collected from a neighbor, and then sat and tried to talk to her while she ignored me as she started in on one of the novels. She did deign to give me some time a little later for what would be our last-ever games of Scrabble. She died in her sleep the following week.
So, that's my plan if I make it to any sort of old age with reasonable eyesight and cognitive abilities. I'm going to read, like Mom.
I'll probably tell stories, too. I already do that.
I do not want to spend my last years in a long term care facility. I also don't want to outlive my children. I only want to live as long as I can doing the things that I love, with the people that I love. Living for the sake of breathing, or simply existing, just doesn't interest me.
I only want to live if I have a purpose, however I choose to define it.
Well nobody wants to spend their last years in a long-term-care facility. Everybody wants the things you say you want. I never heard anyone say, "gee, I can't wait to end my life in a nursing home or incapacitated in some way", but the fact is, some people will.
Then the purpose of your life may be to keep someone else employed taking care of you.
Honestly I don't think about it much. Longevity has never been high on my "must have" list. The family members I know much about tended to reach their early 90s but that doesn't mean they enjoyed them. Some were healthier and happier during their latter years than others. People who fuss and fret about how long they might live or who try to find additional ways to rank themselves higher than someone else (people in my family lived longer than yours) puzzle me. How much energy and time that could be put to some better use do they waste in the process?
Last edited by Parnassia; 01-02-2022 at 05:06 PM..
Location: Stuck on the East Coast, hoping to head West
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
Well nobody wants to spend their last years in a long-term-care facility. Everybody wants the things you say you want. I never heard anyone say, "gee, I can't wait to end my life in a nursing home or incapacitated in some way", but the fact is, some people will.
Then the purpose of your life may be to keep someone else employed taking care of you.
Actually, I know people who are okay with spending their last years in a long term care facility. My mother, for one. She has gone so far as to make us promise to never turn anything off. LTC is not an issue for her at all. My siblings are the same way.
I don't know where you're going with the purpose = employing people to take care of me.
I would rather die at 70 than end up up living even two months in a nursing home. (I'm 68, now, btw.) Three out of my four grandparents lived to the age of 92, and all of them ended up in nursing homes for two weeks to 18 months before they died. No, thanks!
Btw, I am sure I would feel differently if I had grandkids or a HUGE interest of some kind or had something on my "bucket list" that I still want to accomplish, but NONE of the above applies to me. If I died tomorrow, I would die happy.
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