Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64 ...?

[bluem00n]

Now that Paul McCartney is a long way past 64 and presumably encountering the realities of old age, I can't help wondering if he nowadays regrets writing that song, especially in light of its rather chirpy upbeat demeanour. Still, it was written from the perspective of a carefree youth who hadn't yet collided with the brute realities of aging ...

The endocrine system starts to noticeably wind down beyond the age of 40, such that levels of key hormones such as insulin, adrenaline, melatonin, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, and serotonin, along with the thyroid function, all steadily diminish until they're just a fraction of their original levels, resulting in a myriad adverse health effects, both physical and mental.

Similarly, the body's ability to efficiently metabolise nutrients (fats / proteins / carbs / vitamins / minerals) diminishes, resulting in a wide array of imbalances with often very unpleasant side-effects, one very common example among many from mid-life onwards being an increased frequency of painful leg cramps, most often caused by a sodium/potassium imbalance due to steadily declining kidney function.

Routine night sweats often arise as well (due to a combination of reduced insulin and thyroid function). And as diminished melatonin levels result in a greatly reduced ability to remain asleep, the aging individual is prone to waking up at around 3:00am soaked in sweat, and then just lying there awake because they can't get back to sleep again.

Then as aging progresses further, there comes the very real risk of going blind due to cataracts / glaucoma / macular degeneration (and they're just the common causes, there are many others). Deafness is of course a real possibility too.

Along with all that are the dreadful diseases that accompany aging (cancer / heart disease / stroke / diabetes / dementia / and nowadays, COVID). And they are just the most obvious afflictions, there are a great many others that are equally awful - Parkinsons / motor neurone disease / multiple sclerosis - the list seems pretty much endless really, with many afflictions causing intense suffering without being fatal - things like chronic dental problems, arthritis, and tinnitus being more common instances.

So how does the supposed 'good' of increased lifespans translate in Reality ...?

Well, every year in Japan, 30,000 elderly people die alone in their apartments (known as 'kodokushi'), often from a stroke that leaves them paralysed and unable to summon assistance, it quite possibly triggering blindness as well. They may even lose the capacity to think, let alone communicate. So they just lie there absolutely terrified - in bed, or on the floor of their apartment - for days on end, in their own shit / piss / vomit - until they perish from dehydration, else from sepsis caused by infected pressure sores ...

... assuming death occurs at about ten days, that 30,000 annual deaths works out at one every 3 to 4 hours, so right now at this very moment there's roughly 800 elderly Japanese at various stages of dying in this tragic manner, a state of affairs increasingly replicated throughout the developed world. That's what the 'benefit' of longer lifespans frequently equates to.

The media sweep all this under the carpet of course, their main concern is making money by delivering customers with disposable income to advertisers - remember how they announced that Queen Elizabeth II's death certificate said she died of 'old age' ...?

... there's no such thing - she in fact died of multiple myeloma (a very painful cancer of the bone marrow), along with peripheral vascular disease and accompanying neuropathy, plus degenerative disk disease that would've caused her considerable additional pain, reflected in her stooped and much-reduced stature. So she was no doubt doped up to the eyeballs with sedatives and painkillers, many with their own unsavoury side effects (sadly, her husband Prince Philip had the appearance of a corpse in the last published photographs of him).

The Queen and Prince Philip arguably led the most privileged lives of any human beings ever, yet that didn't protect them from being kept alive by the medical industry, and enduring the ravages of advanced aging as a result.

Aging is a terrifying proposition, and I for one see little value in living too far beyond a natural lifespan (which would be equivalent to the time it takes to raise progeny to reproductive age, so about 35 to 40 for humans). It is why I believe the option to CTB should be far more accessible.

Indeed, I'm mystified as to why so many people oppose choice, and instead seem determined to live as long as possible - they're appparently quite oblivious to what they're actually letting themselves in for ...​

 

[Suicidebydeath]

Thanks, this is helpful.

 

[whywere]

Well I am 66 and I started a new position this year. Age as far as I am concerned is a number no more or no less.

I have met folks in their early thirties, and they acted as if they were in their late fifties and on the other side of the coin, I have met folks in their sixties that acted and thought like they were in their late thirties or early forties.

Yes, I have cataracts and gray hair, but I love EDM music, meeting everyone from every corner of the globe and helping and working with all of humanity.

I am older, yes, but I also have life experience, done that, been there, seen that, and at least for me, the chance to hop on SS and have friends and/or a family for the first time in my life, makes me feel, think and react as if I am a lot younger. There in again age is a number.

Sending lots of hugs, love and caring to each and every member of SS. All of you folks are the salt of the earth.

Walter

 

[bluem00n]

Well I am 66 and I started a new position this year. Age as far as I am concerned is a number no more or no less.

I have met folks in their early thirties, and they acted as if they were in their late fifties and on the other side of the coin, I have met folks in their sixties that acted and thought like they were in their late thirties or earl forties.

Yes, I have cataracts and gray hair, but I love EDM music, meets everyone from every corner of the globe and helping and working with all of humanity.

I am older, yes, but I also have life experience, done that, been there, seen that, and at least for me, the chance to hop on SS and have friends and/or a family for the first time in my life, makes me feel, think and react as if I am a lot younger. There in again age is a number.

Sending lots of hugs, love and caring to each and every member of SS. All of you folks are the salt of the earth.

Walter

Aside from its tongue-in-cheek thread title perhaps, my post isn't about 'literal' age Walter ... whether someone is a fit young-at-heart individual in their seventies, else 'old before their time', the physiological aging process remains inescapable either way.

Anyone who dies of natural causes succumbs to long-drawn-out metabolic processes, just as the Queen and Prince Philip did - both kept alive well past their 'use by' dates by the world's most advanced medical contrivances that prolonged suffering and death as much as they extended life.

Unfortunately, biological processes are not only extremely gradual / slow, but typically incredibly painful and frightening too, more so if thwarted by medical interventions. CTB can at the very least reduce what is arguably the worst aspect of dying - the duration of such suffering.​

 

[LaVieEnRose]

It makes the last 30 minutes of potential unpleasantness with SN seem much more palatable.

 

[leeloosnow]

aging can be merciless, it's a process i'm intimately familiar with as a senior caregiver. the people i work with have lost capacity of mind, body, and much else, and it's a daily struggle, but in their world, there are things that bring them joy. there are seniors that have spent their lives in good health, good fitness, and live relatively well in their later years. really, our brains aren't finished forming well into our 20's, and our sense of hearing is the first to typically decline, which can also happen in the 20s.
i've often thought of this, how the irresponsibility's of my youth will catch up to me should i continue. it's daunting, yes. there's typically ways to manage physical decline, and this is something that we're susceptible to even in younger years. illness, disease, and physical pain are not exclusively factors of old age. just my 2c on the matter

 

[FuneralCry]

I view ageing and being trapped in this human body to be an absolutely horrifying thing. It makes so much sense to wish for suicide, it's irrational to want to stay here when all that lies ahead is inevitable suffering with no limit as to how much we can be tortured. I just don't get how anyone could ever see old age as being acceptable, if anyone wishes to get old they must be severely deluded, old age is something incredibly disturbing.

The truth is that it's absolutely insane to be against suicide in a world like this and wish to force others to stay here. All of this is certainly part of the reason as to why I wish to ctb so much. Simply being aware of the reality of existing makes the thought of non existence so incredibly appealing.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Now that Paul McCartney is a long way past 64 and presumably encountering the realities of old age, I can't help wondering if he nowadays regrets writing that song, especially in light of its rather chirpy upbeat demeanour. Still, it was written from the perspective of a carefree youth who hadn't yet collided with the brute realities of aging ...

The endocrine system starts to noticeably wind down beyond the age of 40, such that levels of key hormones such as insulin, adrenaline, melatonin, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, and serotonin, along with the thyroid function, all steadily diminish until they're just a fraction of their original levels, resulting in a myriad adverse health effects, both physical and mental.

Similarly, the body's ability to efficiently metabolise nutrients (fats / proteins / carbs / vitamins / minerals) diminishes, resulting in a wide array of imbalances with often very unpleasant side-effects, one very common example among many from mid-life onwards being an increased frequency of painful leg cramps, most often caused by a sodium/potassium imbalance due to steadily declining kidney function.

Routine night sweats often arise as well (due to a combination of reduced insulin and thyroid function). And as diminished melatonin levels result in a greatly reduced ability to remain asleep, the aging individual is prone to waking up at around 3:00am soaked in sweat, and then just lying there awake because they can't get back to sleep again.

Then as aging progresses further, there comes the very real risk of going blind due to cataracts / glaucoma / macular degeneration (and they're just the common causes, there are many others). Deafness is of course a real possibility too.

Along with all that are the dreadful diseases that accompany aging (cancer / heart disease / stroke / diabetes / dementia / and nowadays, COVID). And they are just the most obvious afflictions, there are a great many others that are equally awful - Parkinsons / motor neurone disease / multiple sclerosis - the list seems pretty much endless really, with many afflictions causing intense suffering without being fatal - things like chronic dental problems, arthritis, and tinnitus being more common instances.

So how does the supposed 'good' of increased lifespans translate in Reality ...?

Well, every year in Japan, 30,000 elderly people die alone in their apartments (known as 'kodokushi'), often from a stroke that leaves them paralysed and unable to summon assistance, it quite possibly triggering blindness as well. They may even lose the capacity to think, let alone communicate. So they just lie there absolutely terrified - in bed, or on the floor of their apartment - for days on end, in their own shit / piss / vomit - until they perish from dehydration, else from sepsis caused by infected pressure sores ...

... assuming death occurs at about ten days, that 30,000 annual deaths works out at one every 3 to 4 hours, so right now at this very moment there's roughly 800 elderly Japanese at various stages of dying in this tragic manner, a state of affairs increasingly replicated throughout the developed world. That's what the 'benefit' of longer lifespans frequently equates to.

The media sweep all this under the carpet of course, their main concern is making money by delivering customers with disposable income to advertisers - remember how they announced that Queen Elizabeth II's death certificate said she died of 'old age' ...?

... there's no such thing - she in fact died of multiple myeloma (a very painful cancer of the bone marrow), along with peripheral vascular disease and accompanying neuropathy, plus degenerative disk disease that would've caused her considerable additional pain, reflected in her stooped and much-reduced stature. So she was no doubt doped up to the eyeballs with sedatives and painkillers, many with their own unsavoury side effects (sadly, her husband Prince Philip had the appearance of a corpse in the last published photographs of him).

The Queen and Prince Philip arguably led the most privileged lives of any human beings ever, yet that didn't protect them from being kept alive by the medical industry, and enduring the ravages of advanced aging as a result.

Aging is a terrifying proposition, and I for one see little value in living too far beyond a natural lifespan (which would be equivalent to the time it takes to raise progeny to reproductive age, so about 35 to 40 for humans). It is why I believe the option to CTB should be far more accessible.

Indeed, I'm mystified as to why so many people oppose choice, and instead seem determined to live as long as possible - they're appparently quite oblivious to what they're actually letting themselves in for ...​

Getting old and old age is the worst hell. Even your brain cells start declining in number. Inductive reasoning begins declining at age 25 as seen in the graph:

Cognitive Changes With Aging

Cognitive decline can begin as early as age 45, warn experts | The BMJ

www.bmj.com

 

[bluem00n]

Getting old and old age is the worst hell. Even your brain cells start declining in number.

Yes, I can't help wondering what's going to happen down the track as more and more people become prone to forgetting their passwords or their PIN numbers ...​

 

[bluem00n]

Below is an extract from an article published today about the invisible but all-too-common fate of elderly people who live alone ...

When Mary Partington, 86, suffered a stroke at home in September 2021, it was 20 hours before she was found.
Twenty hours of not being able to move, lying scared and in pain on her kitchen floor. Her dinner, a stew, sat cold on the kitchen bench.
Greg Partington feared the worst when he looked through the window of his mother's Wellsford, Auckland, home and saw her.
Mary died eight days later, the stroke having "devastated" the left side of her brain.
"My mother could have been there for days, or even weeks."
While it was no one's fault, Greg couldn't let go of the fact his mum suffered while surrounded by unsuspecting neighbours.
"The thought of my mum lying there all alone on that floor. It was a cold night. It just makes me feel very sad."

Though such deaths are hardly ever mentioned in Western news media, they are as routine there as the far better documented 'kodokushi' of Japan (see Post #1), as the most probable outcome for older folk who live alone with little to no social connection. Avoiding such an awful fate is in my view a valid reason for CTB to be far more easily accessible.​

 

[bluem00n]

Another ghastly victim of old age ...

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Another ghastly victim of old age ...

View attachment 102434

Ena Lai Dung suffered extreme pain and extreme torture for months , bedsores , broken bones, starvation , etc.

This can happen to any old person. The risk of stroke, cancer and many other nightmarish diseases rises exponentially as people get over age 60.


Quotes from this article:

Woman who let her mother starve to death declined parole

A woman who let her elderly mother starve to death has been declined parole at her first hearing.

www.odt.co.nz

"A woman who let her elderly mother starve to death has been declined parole at her first hearing.

Cindy Melissa Taylor, 47, is serving a sentence of just over 13 years and had become eligible for parole for the first time.

Taylor was found guilty by a jury of failing to provide her mother, Ena Lai Dung, with the necessities of life, thereby causing her death.

Dung weighed only 29kg and was found lying confined to a green plastic sheet on January 16, 2015.

The 76-year-old had several bedsores, one of which had penetrated through to the bone, and another which was gangrenous.

Dung had 14 fractures to her ribs and sternum, and the pathologist found it would have been painful and interfered with her breathing.

She died of dehydration and malnutrition.

At the trial a paramedic who found Dung described her as looking like a "scarecrow".

At sentencing Justice Edwin Wylie said it was difficult to "imagine death in worse or more degrading circumstances". "

Woman's death 'painful and unnecessary'

Ena Lai Dung died in a pool of her own urine and faeces, starved, dehydrated, neglected and in extreme pain. Today Cindy Taylor was sentenced for Ena's death.

www.nzherald.co.nz

Here a doctor describes the bedsores torture among others that older people in nursing homes are a victim of :

Who By Very Slow Decay

[Trigger warning: Death, pain, suffering, sadness] I. Some people, having completed the traditional forms of empty speculation – “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, &#8220…

slatestarcodex.com

But I guess the pro-lifers wil tell us that extreme pain is subjective , no pain is hardwired in the older parts of the brain and so objectively bad. By pro-lifers here I mean just those that repeatedly say life is good not that they are against the right to die .

 

[bluem00n]

Thanks for those links @pthnrdnojvsc ...

The most unnerving aspect of Ena's demise is that it wasn't in truth even slightly unusual. In fact, such deaths are so commonplace they're essentially deemed mundane by the media, so they aren't reported, unless of course there's some novel 'clickbait' aspect (such as the deceased being undiscovered for months or even years on end), or it's an especially 'slow news day'.

Consumer-oriented media is solely concerned with maximising revenue from advertisers, so anything that might detract from that directive is quite simply 'blanked out'.​

 

[bluem00n]

Well, here's another thing to look forward to as you get older - stenosis - something that starts to afflict nearly everybody over the age of 50, and gets steadily worse year-on-year ... it's an increasingly painful affliction, that directly impacts mobility.

Stenosis is why height diminishes with age, the most recent well-known instance being Queen Elizabeth, who was conspicuously reduced in stature in later life compared to her prime, and who would've surely been on substantial doses of painkillers and sedatives in order to reduce the ordeal of surviving to age 96.​

 

[Mlee75]

Now that Paul McCartney is a long way past 64 and presumably encountering the realities of old age, I can't help wondering if he nowadays regrets writing that song, especially in light of its rather chirpy upbeat demeanour. Still, it was written from the perspective of a carefree youth who hadn't yet collided with the brute realities of aging ...

The endocrine system starts to noticeably wind down beyond the age of 40, such that levels of key hormones such as insulin, adrenaline, melatonin, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, and serotonin, along with the thyroid function, all steadily diminish until they're just a fraction of their original levels, resulting in a myriad adverse health effects, both physical and mental.

Similarly, the body's ability to efficiently metabolise nutrients (fats / proteins / carbs / vitamins / minerals) diminishes, resulting in a wide array of imbalances with often very unpleasant side-effects, one very common example among many from mid-life onwards being an increased frequency of painful leg cramps, most often caused by a sodium/potassium imbalance due to steadily declining kidney function.

Routine night sweats often arise as well (due to a combination of reduced insulin and thyroid function). And as diminished melatonin levels result in a greatly reduced ability to remain asleep, the aging individual is prone to waking up at around 3:00am soaked in sweat, and then just lying there awake because they can't get back to sleep again.

Then as aging progresses further, there comes the very real risk of going blind due to cataracts / glaucoma / macular degeneration (and they're just the common causes, there are many others). Deafness is of course a real possibility too.

Along with all that are the dreadful diseases that accompany aging (cancer / heart disease / stroke / diabetes / dementia / and nowadays, COVID). And they are just the most obvious afflictions, there are a great many others that are equally awful - Parkinsons / motor neurone disease / multiple sclerosis - the list seems pretty much endless really, with many afflictions causing intense suffering without being fatal - things like chronic dental problems, arthritis, and tinnitus being more common instances.

So how does the supposed 'good' of increased lifespans translate in Reality ...?

Well, every year in Japan, 30,000 elderly people die alone in their apartments (known as 'kodokushi'), often from a stroke that leaves them paralysed and unable to summon assistance, it quite possibly triggering blindness as well. They may even lose the capacity to think, let alone communicate. So they just lie there absolutely terrified - in bed, or on the floor of their apartment - for days on end, in their own shit / piss / vomit - until they perish from dehydration, else from sepsis caused by infected pressure sores ...

... assuming death occurs at about ten days, that 30,000 annual deaths works out at one every 3 to 4 hours, so right now at this very moment there's roughly 800 elderly Japanese at various stages of dying in this tragic manner, a state of affairs increasingly replicated throughout the developed world. That's what the 'benefit' of longer lifespans frequently equates to.

The media sweep all this under the carpet of course, their main concern is making money by delivering customers with disposable income to advertisers - remember how they announced that Queen Elizabeth II's death certificate said she died of 'old age' ...?

... there's no such thing - she in fact died of multiple myeloma (a very painful cancer of the bone marrow), along with peripheral vascular disease and accompanying neuropathy, plus degenerative disk disease that would've caused her considerable additional pain, reflected in her stooped and much-reduced stature. So she was no doubt doped up to the eyeballs with sedatives and painkillers, many with their own unsavoury side effects (sadly, her husband Prince Philip had the appearance of a corpse in the last published photographs of him).

The Queen and Prince Philip arguably led the most privileged lives of any human beings ever, yet that didn't protect them from being kept alive by the medical industry, and enduring the ravages of advanced aging as a result.

Aging is a terrifying proposition, and I for one see little value in living too far beyond a natural lifespan (which would be equivalent to the time it takes to raise progeny to reproductive age, so about 35 to 40 for humans). It is why I believe the option to CTB should be far more accessible.

Indeed, I'm mystified as to why so many people oppose choice, and instead seem determined to live as long as possible - they're appparently quite oblivious to what they're actually letting themselves in for ...​

What a well thought out and clearly stated opinion. In other words, I agree:-)

 

[Nightbird]

I am caregiver to both my parents, and my mother is almost completely disabled from spinal stenosis. It's exacerbated untreated scoliosis, created herniated disks, and has trapped nerves. Stenosis makes the bones in the spine shift like they're wringing each other out - the movement is causing her rib cage to compress her lungs; she wheezes even when she's still and cannot take a deep breath. Years of her body compensating for these issues destroyed both knees and caused her ankles to collapse inward. Her MD likened her difficulty walking to driving on flat tires. She cannot stand up for more than 10-15m at a time. She's 72 now - been declining steadily for about 15 yrs. She had a heart attack and quadruple bypass this summer. Proper rehab has been impossible because of her spinal/structural issues. This is a formerly robust woman who was very much like the Italian, peasant stock she came from - never smoked, ate healthfully, walked everywhere, worked F/T until she couldn't anymore, kept a beautiful garden, cooked for everyone, cared for everyone, performed feats of physical and emotional strength beyond the average person's capacity. Now she's bent, twisted, and tortured. The narcotics she takes for pain have rendered her mostly deaf from tinnitus, and actually do very little to offset her pain. The combined effect of constant pain, incremental loss of function, and effects of daily narcotics has rendered her utterly depressed (despite antidepressants …). I've witnessed her personality slowly erased. It's heartbreaking.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

I am caregiver to both my parents, and my mother is almost completely disabled from spinal stenosis. It's exacerbated untreated scoliosis, created herniated disks, and has trapped nerves. Stenosis makes the bones in the spine shift like they're wringing each other out - the movement is causing her rib cage to compress her lungs; she wheezes even when she's still and cannot take a deep breath. Years of her body compensating for these issues destroyed both knees and caused her ankles to collapse inward. Her MD likened her difficulty walking to driving on flat tires. She cannot stand up for more than 10-15m at a time. She's 72 now - been declining steadily for about 15 yrs. She had a heart attack and quadruple bypass this summer. Proper rehab has been impossible because of her spinal/structural issues. This is a formerly robust woman who was very much like the Italian, peasant stock she came from - never smoked, ate healthfully, walked everywhere, worked F/T until she couldn't anymore, kept a beautiful garden, cooked for everyone, cared for everyone, performed feats of physical and emotional strength beyond the average person's capacity. Now she's bent, twisted, and tortured. The narcotics she takes for pain have rendered her mostly deaf from tinnitus, and actually do very little to offset her pain. The combined effect of constant pain, incremental loss of function, and effects of daily narcotics has rendered her utterly depressed (despite antidepressants …). I've witnessed her personality slowly erased. It's heartbreaking.

Does she talk about wanting to die at all or is she determined to live as long as possible?

 

[Nightbird]

Does she talk about wanting to die at all or is she determined to live as long as possible?

LaVieEnRose Infrequently, and always when she's really hurting (to the point of tears) she says things along the lines of "if it's going to stay like this/get worse than this, I don't want to be here." There's enough morphine, Oxy & Percocet in this house to drop a moose. If she really wanted to, she could check out and I'd totally understand. She still has close things in her life - me, my sister, her grandkids (in college/grad school) and her pets. My Dad has dementia so their relationship has changed, but she still has the familiarity of him in the house. She has friends and neighbors that check in. I let her handle as many responsibilities as she wants and I assist as she needs. She still manages her own checkbook and writes the food shopping list. Lord knows she's deadly with a credit card and a browser open to Nordstrom Rack! It's all little things that keep her going.

 

[bluem00n]

I am caregiver to both my parents, and my mother is almost completely disabled from spinal stenosis ...

I realise it's of no comfort Nightbird, but I'm saddened and truly appalled by your mother's awful predicament. In my view, the tortures people face as they age render the rationales of pro-lifers utterly incomprehensible, as if they believe themselves to be somehow immune to such devastating experiences.

To avoid such ghastly outcomes is sufficient reason alone to CTB, to take control of one's demise while it's still possible. Some of the grisly alternatives are documented in the many horror stories submitted to the Death with Dignity site, what's more they're of people who for the most part received palliative care, whereas many more have no access to any kind of relief at all. As you say, it's heartbreaking.

All in all, it seems best to avoid living much beyond the natural lifespan. The challenge is finding both the means and the resolve to make that come about, so as to avoid such trauma - for both the infirm, and caregivers like yourself.​