What Aging Means; 3

the i am what aging meetings riverside radio wypr now brings you the third of four programs concerned with aging and some other problems arising from this universal experience leading these informal discussions dr dorothy larsen consultant to the tower league of the riverside church with dr larson

are three young adults who are interested in this problem charles foster that miller and jim former junior here is dr larson today we're going to be dealing with the second stage a meeting which has to do with the frail old person not yet seen now but very frail i'm beginning to lose motivation changing rapidly toward the third or terminal stage which is that of senility or complete bed rest this time today will have to have a lot of discussion on health care in it's difficult to understand and otherwise because those people may not have all three stages of aging many people reached the stage especially in the ongoing nature of aging as it is today with medical care increasing you know in disposing of many of the diseases that disturb people

early or so that many people will not only perhaps have died and about seventy now probably made ninety and we have the octogenarian is a very common thing today in many homes for example where people used to go in their sixties they now going in their eighties and this is the common thing i think about two thousand people over a hundred years old in this country today and that will probably be increasing number of these people in their later years many don't have unlimited activity about twenty two percent of all older people keep their activity almost up to date and chronic diseases are very limited tivoli is which is the age i'm talking about the frail person work has limited activity these people only about thirty four percent of all people say in their ages between sixty and ninety and that partially

limited which would be about twenty eight percent but the completely limited people in this age group will be about fifteen percent in the second stage because the chronic diseases which began to show on the primary stage and began to peek up about them one out of cannes i'm able to work or keep house at about the age of seventy five so just seen most of people it stopped work will say roughly in the second stage about seventy five or thereabouts and many women are not able to do their own house were and this has great an impact upon the family and upon individuals and fall of those people are then you're faced with a problem which we talked about last time decreased income increased illness increased need a bed care in a very difficult time and so the family itself becomes very much involved in this as you can well imagine what would happen in any of your families for instance

of your grandparents were nearby and they were unable to carry on as they had me doing three percent a psychological aspects of this well you can imagine a person a woman who has run the house competently and well she's perhaps their own ironing some of her own sewing all her life she likes to get a good meal in the grandchildren come in our art prices so deformed or their hands are such she can no longer iron ore so it becomes increasingly difficult for her to cook so that the thing that made her feel perhaps as well our as abel as anyone else has not decreased which makes her feel very badly about her condition and the fact that a physical feeling about it she's in pain she's having difficulty and that is no longer the person that she thought she was you see in this what about the old gentleman for instance was able to get down to business maybe well to seventeenth to enjoy doing so perhaps he went down every day and said nice chair on fiddle all

business or something like this and now here he is they've told him he'll have to be quieter these pressures and conditioning muslim excited by business and even with tranquilizers or other drugs are real problems dr larson just mentioning though they were drugs here i think raises a big question for me and that is you also had mentioned that with increased needs and with less income medical care and attention cost less more much more could you elaborate upon this as a source of the problem here really about everywhere today charleston matter aging and one of the things and freddie are going to be pretty seriously it's pretty important problem was and as we're faced with the fact that not only one parent or grandparent relay what we may very well get to grandparents and parents living in other words you're going to have for people not working really have various degrees a violist with

the costly effects of this illness right now everyone's talking about medicare or bills about medicare something as kind and i'm here to get into the argument that some things can be said about the costs i think many people fail to realize this specter i was out in arizona and two years ago and an engineering meeting and some young people are finding that what my specialty was approached me and asked to be reduced one on my point of view about medicare i refuse to be involved but i found out was that down to lunch with them that they were totally unaware of the costs at least those costs that are prevalent on the eastern seaboard today in these matters and i remember that i said to this woman who protested that she couldn't see why people could continue to pay their medical costs that they'd saved and often and thrifty enough there wasn't any reason why they could be their own medical bills and hester acidity you any idea of this classic us

about a thousand dollars for a broken hip not present in the city for instance didn't care in a hospital involving a broken hip it's thirty dollars a day many people in over seventy five have no health insurance and our health insurance comes generally much to people bought separately so this means that this person's by your grandmother breaks a hip as she may have a small income that she has enough of this cost jobs but there's this increasing cost has put on her and it takes months for it to be better and then afterwards is very expensive f to carry a special hospital or special therapy which runs about fifteen dollars an hour something like this if it's brought into the home and you can see what involvement your family your father and mother may have been a case like this and many people i think the reason why i find a great many people say well i don't understand is that you do not know that actual costs in this case

and the insurance now presented in many many cases mark state had they are sixty five last year which was good but this is very expensive and the people live without any aid or independent people it's pretty expensive for it will take some of them for instance right now about thirteen dollars a half a month for complete medicare for older people you see not your own retirement incomes about two hundred of months you can't possibly do this so what happens is that you have to borrow or you manage in some way or you call on your relatives and of course if the person is is unable to care for this his children or even his grandchildren may be held liable for this care in most of our states to see the involvement here it seems at this is that there are great psychological problems of with just this whole area and then the older person's feeling worthy of himself as being a burden on other people i think that it's that and then i know and

many of us thought when the criminals bill appeared it was a good bill but it was a halfhearted bailey didn't need it's the very fact that a lot of people had this to declare themselves in need to have it and it meant that you could have more single person can have eighteen hundred dollars and unmarried couple could have twenty five hundred dollars income then you see you have emergency illness and promptly the relatives are called in so that people would could manage it all we have found in our county that people could manage a dog would not fall back on criminals because their son had children going to college and there was sadness and the family otherwise and they got along without the care they need it rather than declare themselves under the term male there are instances plenty of them where hospitals use it anyway and you make use of that and this of course is sometimes without the cause without the agreement of the family dr larson it

what can the family do to help the person who is going to the second stage of aging both in terms of finance and helping the person or the person's in their family that are experiencing this well one thing we can always be done i think is a moral support they're also comes the time the second stage of aging psychologically that just as the while ago something about the psychology of it in the changes related to the physical becomes a time when individual no longer is capable of making decisions and this i think is the real a crux of the matter the family has to help this decision making and this is difficult because you know i was that your mother your grandmother could make good decisions and suddenly she becomes unable to make her decision she doesn't want to do she lives alone in the big house and she wants to continue living near sometimes you say it's too much for me i think perhaps i should

move out and then the next day everything goes better she feels a little better and so she's wants to stay here and this kind of chilly shouting which goes on needs to be corrected by the family itself justice as the mother or the grandmother in dealing with her own children to help them make their decisions so and turn this is where the family can return this and how can you tell what a person is like getting into this state have not be able to make their own decisions when a lot of the manifestations jam on this one i think there are a whole personality the individual changes there's a great decrease in the temple sometimes of speech sometimes of thinking the prison will hesitate a long time and will refuse to except something very simple for example if you go in and you're saying am i brought something that you know she likes was sam brought you take the i thought you'd like him to look at it differently and said how did you know that i like that kind of caved in other words she slipped in

such a way that she doesn't remember that she ever did like a promising little tiny things and then they're there sometimes they're equal strength fails and she begins very much to two evidence is in the lack of care for clothes and things like this there's an interesting case histories i might give you won this for example i know a woman who we might call the perpetual volunteer in the church she was a very competent person with a great deal of independence she had capabilities education but this is like the continuing effort of the chairman will not resign it's the kind of thing every church in every club in every women's organization has faced with the only person who will not submit to the change of aging and stepping down two years ago for instance this perpetual volunteer if you want a color that was sharp she came to me she had said that she thought she should be thinking about her a job

since she was living alone in some kind of a good place to go and live set i think the time will come when i should live i think this may be true now i find that she's forgotten this altogether i brought it up to her because i thought it might be one way of helping her solve our problem but she's forgotten she ever asked me anything like this and i volunteered some information about some new sources i thought she might like to layer of ocean i'd like to investigate and she said oh no i think i like it where i am now state where it obviously she's passed she needs help in the decision her appearance has gone down she wears a great deal of room she comes jangling many chains her taste it was good before her taste seems to have slipped her clothes aren't all gotten together should she has a new slip some things like this and yet she is it still presenting yourself as a volunteer immigrants into a situation and this is

what i mean to see she's i am i found francis in one long term job she had been she went into a lounge room and took off her shoes and proceed to lie down there half ago to sleep in public role will this is obviously not the lady that i saw two years ago who knew what she was doing was neatly in carefully dressed was dressed in good taste a nice appearance the two years two years to this but what do you do to help her sleep unfortunately in this case there is no argument can come into this situation unless a voluntary agencies that mean she has i believe a nice living far away she had to close to this nice and she doesn't hear too often from money so he can't write the nice and say would you please come east and help and he decided this problem this i think i'm at the convention about this it would seem to me that this might be the place where

church related skills coming in that hopefully that person or a social worker would go to this woman and present to her some idea of her need their cars there's other ways doubled of the volunteer coverage for this situation you could just one single horrible and treated this way this in a christian situation one can do this but this summer some person needs to cross the path of this individual and when helping schiavo show her next move she needs this and i think as children often do it and they needed and they would be happy for it once this is offered where's the line or two hours in between someone living alone living with their family or living in a professional home for the aged well the big change is that parenting is there oversight it may very well occur in a private home or in maine public only capital wage this a

deterioration of the individual which made her very rapidly because of a cerebral incident or some other changes or some even traumatic experience that the individuals or seems to have so far as they're concerned it would have the same effect in a course where you have him in the holy see this beginning you can prepare the person perhaps and they had many of them have moments when you're a sharper sentiment this is fading of the fighter sometimes it was outward in a quite well and able and the tiger was away and they seemed quite last for long now if you had a person in your own home like this you would perhaps helpful to think about the fact that home with a capital h with protective gear has indicated this would be i would hope not too difficult to do if there was a good feeling in the family said reading individual must never be allowed to think they're going

put out or shoved out what is possible while the individual has their wits if he wants a handout can be involved in the choice that the individual can see several homes and again be prepared for them this whole maybe better than that for various reasons and you find that they have the right of choice now the individual i find as long as they live as long as their mental activity desires to strike of choice in the very simple people completely and when they can do nothing else they won't evidence this this desire to have the right of choice by refusing food in other words if i can't find help us with arthritis i can cause a great deal of disturbance and show i'm an individual by refusing to lead it's still part of our culture that people feel guilty about putting their relatives at home but when it comes to a place where obviously his health or the family's health or the condition in which islam is threatened then i think you have to step in and say whoa mother to date i decided obama could somehow but we think you

need nursing care we can't afford it here or is it possible it's small children let's look around something like this dr nissen we've been talking about homes for the aged and some of them that i've seen have been quite charming and very nice and i've had the feeling that this is the type of place that would be our home others i found there have been very unpleasant what kind of a home would you want to put an older person that you loved in two and one of the criteria is it you look for in a good home and the things that you look for that you wouldn't want to farm well i would say that one of the criteria that one might ask about all people who deal with older people is some evidence of very real thinking for the older person love has indicated here and um i remember years ago the reading an account i think it was this but wrote about the ms pearl but wrote about hunting for a home for a child who needed a particular type of home and

how she found very orderly very clean very neat places but without much loved evidence and she found this orderly place is with considerable evidence this is a tricky kind of thing and that can only be found out by getting acquainted with the people living there to find out the really like it if it feel as the house wanted but i think is as we go on in the next ten years there will be considerable change in this one area the scandinavians have gone into this at some length and about a very nice job in different kinds of situations for older people in the second stage of aging one of them is that you can have on the person who could be rehabilitated and other forms in the second stage in which you can build a person not care for them and so on and get them in the condition to go back into the home again that's desire and they have the situation then they have what they call a home situation for the fray o o which would be as nearly as i've been trying to tell you about this age

means it means less in the way of permanent invalid right here and most of our homes today are set up with lodging situations and then infirmary situations not in for his very expensive kind of thing it means so i was jumping the case about five hundred a month costs in many situations many of our homes in another new york area run about two hundred and eighty nine dollars cost four ambulatory a frail person who needs to have very slight attention but the method to put that prison infirmary your prices rise and skyrocket rate you see so that i think you'll find that makes me in the metropolitan area find more of these situations where people can have some care less expensive care and before this frail state history so that you know that a nurse was in residence grandmother could ring a bell and she didn't feel well hit hard problem to get rid of

bell and owners could be caught this might be all that was needed for an estimated to see whether any objective are professionals either individually or in agencies that would help new orleans should go to him choosing a whole yes i think so for instance in the new york area but you know we have the price and welfare agency which percent something like fifty two homes for older people but the thing to do is to recommend that the family you're counseling a grandmother with them down to see a lady or have someone come from the agency to talk about the choices available you see and a side for instance i've seen mistakes made in this one person was very steady minded is sent down their elegant home in the midst of westchester homeless beautiful but this person who likes to some noise of the city streets is lost to see which is that they had done otherwise and have to consider so many facets of this not only good medical care are how many doctors there on the board some variety of medical care that should

be an internist it should be someone who knows something about bone disease is all this kind of thing you could find out from their public records but i would say that an agency or a special counselor that always find this kind of person i think there's a counseling care of people in the arctic up on this the charges about a hundred and fifty dollars transfer place in person but if that person is placed in such under such an agency this private group a very skilled person spokespersons not happy and they will find another place and it means that until this person and the home are something to see the chart and one it seems to be the difference between a home and some of these other facilities for a few people i remember having read about a retirement home for people with clear up until the time when they're taking care of until the time they didn't die is there some specific differences that occurred here yes we have to do any of these in the eastern seaboard there are some and i think there are many and

process those in the process of course some of them are still on the drawing boards and this by the time you get the mortgage for eleven million dollar structure you have problems so that i think that the problem here is that you have to think again on the stages of ad because i think we're not going to be able to find and pay for the kind of structure that's neither will cover all these at one in the same time i believe in the future that will keep the person at home in his own home as long as possible standing in the service because everywhere that they have experimented with this in europe all over europe becomes this cost about one tenth and that you would have like to think of is a convalescent home where the prison would have some are the home for the frail as i said we did get some here and of course you would have a hospital type situation where you've got oxygen you could have an immediate attention for emergency situations for the very ill dr larson which you make some quick

suggestions for this single person who has no family either what he can do himself or with someone concerned about him can do on the stage i think that the big family less open person and most of them are quite timid about this to begin with the night i seen any evidence that these people handle themselves sometimes when they need and i've had people come to me and said why do you want a girl just now of mormon able about seventy five i could see no need for one thing but she came back that i won't do it well i can i could decide for myself when i walk i'm going out the west coast until a player to come back from a final decision which is seen as a pre supposes some means to do it but the image and old person who's alone for when they have this decision made for him gently by social worker said dr larson could you please help us and by telling us what we'll be doing next week well i think next time i will continue this

matter and the third stage of aging when you deal with a senile old and this gradual disintegration of the older person and while even without set torn sweater finish with a little story i have cases to pursue ninety two i found this material recently on a woman who is still a designer and their offense she's ninety two and takes an hour from coming into the city and an hour out but she's perfectly able and apparently still doing the designing job and them see see it is that well with the record and the interview and that she said that she did twenty years so ago she had some swelling in la and she was distressed has had hardly any illness zoller life which is often that happens and she went to a doctor he said she and her trouble selling to go into hospital for examination she brought she said no she wouldn't she won the part of this one state alongside a lot of doctors but i'm fine and there she is ninety two film

coming to work still earning a designer spain if you please at ninety two and still i'm taking a little glass support eating raw hamburger when she was plenty of vegetables and twenty from the line too you've been listening to a discussion on the problems of aging and dr dorothy larsen consultant to the tower league of the riverside church with her were three young adults charles foster that miller and jim farmer jr today's discussion was concerned with a secondary stage of aging next week dr lawson will continue these discussions and her topic will be the third or terminal stage of aging among the points that will be discussed are the needs of the older person and the stage and his relationship to those around him and the problems of protective carefully age dr larson has prepared a short summary all these programs and titled what aging means it includes several suggestions for further reading if you would like a copy

for yourself or for use with discussion groups send a self addressed than doubled to wi they are new york twenty seven i'll repeat that send a self addressed stamped envelope drew w audio you're twenty seven when aging means is produced and recorded by w are they are the fm station all the riverside church in the city of new york it's

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