Experiencing firsthand how difficult an aging alcoholic, quadriplegic, post stroke, narcissistic, demented or simply ‘nothing’s wrong with me, I can drive, I don’t need those meds, I don’t need to go to a nursing facility’ kinda parent surely gives you some insight on what to do, what not to do and how to prepare for our own aging and eventual demise.
How do you plan to age gracefully and what advice do you have for us all?
My mom stayed fit and walked everywhere, and was a teacher and curious lifelong learner& traveler sort of person and still got dementia before she died. Her mom too. Honestly it terrifies me but there is only so much you can control. I do work out and stay fit and so far so good, I honestly feel great. My hope is that science comes through with a good treatment, and between me & my husband we have a lot of children to hopefully help some if we need it.
and this is why we should be rioting in the streets about the state of the medicinal industry, we could have the ability to cure terrible ailments like dementia and cancer, but because that’s not actively profitable we only allocate some token amounts of funding to the research, and what few treatments we do have are hideously expensive for many people to the point that they might as well just spend the money on enjoying their last few years of life than spend it on extending their lives by a few more years…
We as a society have just decided that profit for a couple thousand rich people is more important than ourselves being able to continue living.
Thank you for this rant and I agree, I ought not need to spend years being greedy as fuck just to be able to afford end of life care.