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This is such a great topic/debate! I'm the caregiver for my 87 yr old mother-in-law. She's been in & out of hospice.... currently out (another topic for another day). She was released from hospital yesterday & her blood sugar was over 400 & she had a UTI. She is a changed woman... She is moody & mean & wants to die. But the doctor made the comment that she needs to be on a diabetic diet. Really? Ugh.
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SonOutOfState Sep 2019
As someone else commented, there is a point where all of this borders on 'cruel and unusual'! Mom has been "ready" to go for more than a few years. She has buried 2 of her children, grandchildren, and even one great-grand. She is existing, but hard to say that she is living. The one thing I have learned is that I now have an appoint with my attorney to modify my will and living will to explicitly state that I want no part of this when my time comes. I want a 'Kovorkian' to step in when/if I am ever in a similar state. I think 6 states now have 'death with dignity' laws on the books...hope that spreads!!
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Personally, I would prefer to tell her to forget all the rules and do whatever will give her some joy.

Your words, Not mine: I AGREE. She is 90... let her live life ... Let nature take its course.

Have fun play music.. laugh, cry, smile. enjoy the time with her... You have family - backup.... I did not the last year.....
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SonOutOfState Sep 2019
Sorry you did not have any family to help...I am 99% certain I could do this alone...but, then again, the decision would be mine alone, and we would spend our last day on a sugar high! Yet another example of an old adage, 'there is no such thing as a one-sided coin'. Every issue, viewed differently, has pluses and minuses.
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My mother will be 94 next month. Diabetic, bad eyesight, bad knees (1 replaced, 1 not), dementia, high blood pressure, has traveled the world, drove until we made her stop, loves sweets, especially chocolate & ice cream. We tried to have her watch her diet, and sodium, didn’t work. After awhile we just let her go. At 94, I believe it’s a little too late to change her ways. She has always done and ate whatever she wants. And we got tired of hearing her whine about it. Her cardiologist agreed that if you can’t eat what you want at 94, life is not worth living. That was 2 yrs ago and she is still here, eating ice cream and chocolate everyday!
I would say the same thing to your mom at her age. Let her be happy in her final years. And I would say the ones who don’t agree with that, need to think about how they will care for her 24/7/365 keeping her alive for years to come. Sounds selfish to me.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother to death, and if she were 60 or 70 I would be watching her like a hawk. But I really believe with all the medical marvels and drugs , people are living way past their expected lifetime, to what , lay in bed and be more or less a vegetable because their bodies have failed them? Just my opinion. Good luck!!
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i agree with quality over quantity.

Sometimes I just don't understand doctors... my grandma is on deathwatch now, no food nor water for 4 days so far, and heavy morphine. However she still has terrible anxiety but the Dr ordered her anti-anxiety meds removed as "they interact badly with the morphine."
WTF. She has days left, for real, and they are leaving her whispering "help help help help" on repeat while she dies over days, because 2 meds don't interact well?

That's taking caution too bloody far!! What risk are they reasonably hoping to mitigate?
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SonOutOfState Sep 2019
My older brother passed a little over a year ago now. When he went to Hospice, they did all the vitals and assessments and said he would likely be gone in 2-3 days. They were amazed that he hung on for 11 days (no food and no water, just meds for pain)...with the last six days of us thinking we were saying our final good-byes every 4 to 6 hours. The human spirit to live is, imho, stronger in some than in others. He was mentally gone the last few days, but his body simply did not want to give up. It is so hard to see our loved ones go through this.

Prayers that she will pass soon.
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So today I am taking my 92 yo mother with dementia who can barely see, or hear, or walk and has the mind of a 5 yo to the clinic... again, to listen to a Dr. again tell her there is nothing that can be done for her intermittent chronic back pain.  In a week she will forget this trip, claim she hasn't seen a Dr. for years, and insist I make her an appt.  And so it goes...over and over.  She lives in an assisted complex with my 88 yo father who underwent pacemaker surgery a few months ago (against his original plan not to prolong his life) so that he would be there for my mom.  They are both so "ready to go" and my father and I can only cope and pray for death as we watch my mother decline; knowing that at some point she will be too much for him to handle and end up in "24-hour lockup"....so sad.  And such a terrible way to remember the parents I love so much.  Some days I am afraid one or both of them will outlive me and there will be nobody to make sure they get good care...but what can I do?
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Windyridge Sep 2019
Black Angel, I had a very similar situation, both parents in AL, dementia and tons of health problems. Between them there were 6 or 8 docs, I couldn’t even keep it all straight. I put them on the in house doc plan and ended all the stupid visits to the specialists who would deem them just fine but would want a follow up visit.

I sort of started my own palliative care plan. Mom has a fall, yes, we need xrays. But I quit the never ending doc visits. A podiatrist came through once a month, they got routine checkups by an RN or NP.

Docs need to learn what your car mechanic does. At some point it doesn’t make sense to put a new tranny in a car with 200 K miles and lots of rust.

I also was afraid they’d outlive me. After a series of horrible falls mom died about 1 1/2 years ago. Dads still hanging on in memory care. He’s 89 and doesn’t limp as much as me when we take a walk.
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Let her do what she wants. She's earned it.

A few months ago at the doctor's, my 91 year old mom told the doc that she didn't like using her oxygen (supplemental at night) or her inhaler for COPD because it gave her a sore throat and nose bleeds. She also doesn't like the diuretics because she keeps having accidents. The doctor gave mom her blessing to stop taking all of it. Privately the doctor told me that mom's meds are the very smallest of band aids. At this point, mom has congestive heart failure (20% function), MGUS - a blood disorder that won't kill her but causes severe bone pain all over her body, COPD, and fronto-temporal dementia. Daily mom is in pain, depressed, angry, paranoid, and confused. As the doctor put it, this is only going to get worse and her quality of life is already poor. If the meds she's taking have side effects that make her feel bad and aren't really preventing further deterioration, what's the point? I hugged that doctor that day. It was sanest, most humane attitude I've seen in any health professional yet. At a certain point, it's time to let go, enjoy whatever time you have left and accept that to everything there is a season. Peace.
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SonOutOfState Oct 2019
Yes, I compare it to a really bad remake of Groundhog Day. Glad you did find one doc who understands and showed compassion.
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