When Living Costs Too Much

By now, you have surely heard of how the Eskimo elders, once they could no longer care for themselves or once they became a hindrance to their group, would float themselves off to sea on a small block of ice to die.

Now…this is not entirely true. I studied the Inuit (part of my Anthropological studies) and the elders were greatly revered for their oral history. But…there are many cases of suicide or assisted suicides on record. There was even a spoken law in which – if someone asked 3 times to die – their wish had to be granted. It was a harsh area to live in and an extra mouth but little food meant that the group could die as a whole…

As you can see above…this post will be about death…but to be a little more precise- end-of life-care. If we want to be totally blunt…our medical advances have made it possible for us to continue living well past when we should and living with things that would have killed our “lesser” ancestors in the past. People used to die from COLDS and MEASLES! Now-a-days those are fairly common and pose no real threat. Hell…people (Hi Magic Johnson) are living for decades with the virus that is supposed to be the end-all. Science is great….but…what about nature?

There used to be an ebb and flow to this type of thing. Babies are born and grow up. They have babies of their own…then the older generation has surpassed its usefulness and they pass. This struck me in Biology when my teacher bluntly said Once you have kids and get them to the point where they are self-sufficient you are no longer of use to nature. Jaws dropped but then he further explained that nature intended us to procreate similar to the other animals and to continue our species…nothing more…nothing less. Nature used to be able to take care of these things. The older members of the flock couldn’t compete for resources and mates or would get injured/sick and die. This was the case with the Neanderthals (to give them a blanket name) as well and even persisted into the dark ages. With advances in medicine came wonderful things- we could combat these plagues and diseases- but also very terrible things. Food/resource shortage, over-crowding, and stripping the natural areas caused their own problems – namely...well...famines and new diseases.

I often wonder what I’m going to be like when I’m elderly. Am I going to be one of those go-getters who’s still moving and shaking at age 80 or am I going to be sickly and bed-ridden? Are my children going to have to come to help me bathe or help me to simply live my life? Will I have to have a 24-hour nurse? I see people strapped to an oxygen tank or confined to a bed for the rest of their lives. There are people who are essentially vegetables (not just the elderly of course…) who can never move again, can NEVER come off of their medicines or machines, lest they will die. Some can’t even be considered….alive…technically. There’s got to be some point when you’re taking 15 medicines 3 times a day and an additional 10 to combat the negative effects of those medicines, where you start to realize that it is more work to live than it should be. When you can no longer function (and I mean life functions – eat, breathe, expel waste) without the assistance of others…. I personally would not want to be that way…and certainly would not want that financial, emotional, and mental burden to fall on my family members and children. I would rather die than be bed-ridden and semi-conscious for the rest of my life.

Here is an article I was reading about end-of-life care. Its mostly about the costs associated with it ala Obama’s universal medical plan and cost cutting but I’m curious- what do you think about end-of-life care as a whole?? I’m not advocating killing off the elderly but, at what point do you say ‘this is too much’?