Medical Catch-22

[BOSSHOG]

Per the Alzheimer's Association, Medical Advances in combatting heart disease and Cancer have allowed people to live long enough to get Alzheimer's. Its expected that there will be 16 million people in this country with Alzheimer's by 2050. My Dad died of Alzheimer's. Truly a horrible disease.

Source: NPR

[BOSSHOG]

1. Gratuitous kick cause I think this is interesting

[Horse with no Name]

2. My Father-in-Law just died with it last month

What is equally as frightening is that MORE people are getting cancer and fewer doctors are going into Oncology as a specialty. I heard it on the news a few weeks back.
That means that specialized cancer treatment won't be as available. The number of oncologists over the age of 50 is something like 65%.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. My g-gmother and grandfer either had Alzheimer's or mini strokes that acted

very like it. As you say, really horrible. :(

[BOSSHOG]

4. It was so sad

to see him literally lose his mind. He was in a nursing home for a short while (what a horrible existence) but we brought him home to die.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Mine both died in the home. My gradfather got too violent for my nana to handle and

even too fesity for the local nursing home, so he wound up in the Vets' home lockdown wing. And actually that was a very nice place for him and the nursing stff were very wonderful there. But by the time he passed he was strapped in a wheel chair drooling on himself.

My dad asked me to take him (dad) behind the house and shoot him rather than let him get that way. And I worry a bit that this might happen to me too.

[BOSSHOG]

9. We had a hard time with my father

He was wearing us all out so we put him in a very nice nursing home (still a miserable existence) for a short while until he was borderline comatose. We propped him up so he could look out the window and see his horses. I'd like to have a pill to take if I ever got Alzheimer's (which I'm probably susceptible to.) I'd hate for my wife to go through the heartache and financial ruin of that disease. Just let me die, let her grieve and then get on with life. I was talking to a gentleman at the nursing home where my Dad was in southern Missouri. His wife was an Alzheimer's patient and was in the nursing home for 13 years. He was wiped out financially.

[GreenPartyVoter]

10. I still say it is a crime that euthenasia is illegal in so many places.

[BOSSHOG]

11. It truly is bizarre

We will care about you until you are born and we will ensure that you will be kept alive with artificial devices forever, even though we don't know you nor pay any of your or your families bills, because we are good christians.

[The2ndWheel]

5. We live that long artificially

It used to be an exception. Now it's becoming the rule. If we ever get to the point of increasing the life span even more, and finding a way to treat Alzheimer's, guess what will happen? We'll have to come up with a name for something that will happen to us when we reach the age of 125. Nothing comes for free, and old age isn't immune(come on, that's sort of funny). Nature is the only counter-balance we have left. It will continue to do this, and we will continue in our attempt to eradicate whatever it comes up with. That cycle will never end until we cure death. Then we'll have plenty of new problems.

[Crandor]

6. The natural human lifespan is about 20 years.

Are you past that yet? Guess what, you're a geezer too by pre-civilization standards.

[The2ndWheel]

8. I was just expanding on the catch-22

Just pointing out what we do, what nature does, and then what we do as a result. To continue that process will require more control of life on our part. The only outcome of that has to be to cure death, or else we're destroying our habitat for nothing.

If we hadn't created time, we wouldn't know we "only" lived x amount of years, but that's a different topic.

I'm 28, so back in my day, when we had to walk to school, uphill both ways...

[mdmc]

12. and once your spouse has Alzheimer's, you will need a divorce in order to get treatment

:mad: