Old age - Is it a curse?

I shared a few links last week about palliative care, assisted living, hospice, terminal disease, etc. Here is another one on nursing homes
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/health/24nursing.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

I don't know how many of them are single, married, divorced, widows, widowers, etc., but there are in nursing homes, some by choice and some by the choice of their family. Recently my colleague's father, diagnosed with brain tumor, malignant (final stages) moved into a hospice because her mother could not take care of him single-handedly and both girls were working in different cities. It can be both emotionally and physically draining to see a close family member every day suffering and sinking deeper in the jaws of death.

My dad's grandmother lived till 90, but her last year was in bed. We were in a joint family and we took turns and attended her. Awareness about simple old age disease like Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Dementia, etc. was not there. We failed to understand her illness and rather attributed to personality and behavioral traits from youth. In India we don't classify illness and understand the seriousness of it, rather we park it under the umbrella of "Old age", "senility", etc.

Today India is rapidly progressing towards the western lifestyle. In most cases both spouses are working, in some cases children are far away busy earning in various foreign currencies and in some cases people don't want to deal with the physical labor of nursing an ailing family member and take care of daily chores. In another 5-10 years we will soon have a great demand for such facilities. Since I have decided to stay single I may end up in one of these centers and who knows, I may be battling something as simple as arthritis or something scary like prostrate cancer , I don't even know where the hell prostrate in my body is. All I know is to prostrate. :-)

I am keeping myself abreast of what is happening in the West, and I don't want to wait for my turn to learn about it. Now you know why I read such articles and generously share it with you. Sometime it is better to be self taught rather than wait for life to teach you. Even if you don't get a chance to live, you can still reach out to people and help them.

BTW, I have a plan to start something for elders along the lines of palliative care, assisted living, hospice, etc. Irrespective of whether you have a family or not, spouse or not, people end up here because they need attention, care and emotional support that is not available at home. For
someone like me who will have no kids and wife, this is my destination baby. Growing up is not mandatory, but growing old is.

Apologize, if I am sounding pessimistic, self loathing and cruel, but journey of life is such. If you wish and think along the same lines, we can engage in a discussion and start volunteering our time at a hospice. We will get to meet older people with debilitating disease, their families
and importantly what it takes to run a hospice.

If this interest you then we can talk, if this email threatens then you can ignore, you never received it and the delete button is just a mouse click away. But remember what goes around, comes around!

Here are the other links that you may want to read:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/health/09sisters.html?ref=health
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/20/health/20doctors.html?_r=1&em=&pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/health/policy/17untested.html?ref=health


I will stand by to hear from you.