231–240 of 243 posts
Your dad crawling up the stairs is helping to fend off muscle atrophy. There's a risk of course. Falling down the stairs could lead to death after complications. But it's not as out-right bad as you might assume, and crawling reduces the fall risk a bit. Falling is a risk even with normal walking. But if you don't have some movement in their life, they degrade faster and die sooner. There is risk from all choices
classic hackernews response
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I'm 40 and my dad is 72. A couple of months ago he had an emergency spine surgery because apparently a spine bone was clinching a nerve. Before the operations, in a couple of weeks he started losing feeling in one leg. After the successful operation, the doctors told him that the fact that he could still walk was product of his VERY active life, and that he has athlete's body. He has always been super athletic: He wa…
Did I read you right that you do 90 minutes of rowing a day? How do you fit it all in?
When I think about slowly deteriorating into a dementia-ridden, wheelchair-bound elder living in a nursing home I am struck with horror. Old people are an enormously expensive burden to society and mostly live in misery and pain waiting for their next doctor's appointment and their next friends funeral.
I wish there was a societal mechanism for an easy and clean death.
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Great advice. You won't have to worry about the things the person you responded to until your 90's rather than your 70's. It's still worth thinking about. My dad is in his 70's and is dealing with Lewy Body Dementia. It's terrible. If I start showing the symptoms, I'm definitely going to take control of my own death. Quality of life is far more important to me than quantity of life.
Robin Williams got Lewy Body. I guess he decided to take the same door you're looking at. I would too.
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Start wingsuit gliding an the problem will take care of itself
I have seriously thought about leaving a bucket list of expensive & risky stuff for when I'm old (why not take up motor racing, acrobatic flying, sailing around the world at 75?) but whenever I bring this up my gf is horrified.
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Video calls weren't banned, so it wasn't as bad as for people that nobody calls at all.
Video calls are not the same. Never will be, we like to see our loved ones, hug them, seeing them on a screen is nice, but it is not the same.
But it is dismissive to those people with nobody at all in their lives, to equate "got calls instead of in-person visits" with "nobody knows or cares about you and you will never receive a call from anyone for the rest of your life".
The GGP conflated those experiences but they are qualitatively different.
I'm fully in favour of visiting the old people in your life.
But I wish people would also spend some time brightening the lives of other old people as well.
The biggest challenge, of course, is convincing an older adult to do strength training and to do it consistently and challenging enough so that they see outcomes. One way to facilitate this is to do it with them. Their greatest motivation is likely to spend time with their adult children, so if you can use that as the primary motivator, do it. I'm actually the CEO of a program called Vivo (teamvivo.com) that provides this service through online, live and interactive classes. I've been doing Vivo twice per week for the last 18 months with my dad. We live in different cities but participate in this class together, and over this past 18 months my dad has NEVER missed a class. It's crazy to see the difference in his life as a result.
Whether it's Vivo or anything else, find a strength class or personal trainer that your parents can participate in and that will hold them accountable. And if you need to participate with them to get them started, do it. It will provide the motivation they need to start and will ultimately improve your relationship, as well.
Best of luck and I'm happy to answer any questions!
The best thing you can do is realize these are unique individuals. They’re your parents, sure, but it’s not your responsibility. Live your life, let them live theirs. It’s ridiculous the way we as a society have normalized the idea that we need to care for our parents.
Don't blame the kids for "normalizing" what their parents did. I couldn't have changed the choices my mother made, obviously not when I was still an infant but really even much later. As you say, parents are unique individuals living their own lives. If their choices eventually lead to them being unable to look after themselves, what are the children to do? Let them starve or freeze to death on the street? Like it or…
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Don't blame the kids for "normalizing" what their parents did. I couldn't have changed the choices my mother made, obviously not when I was still an infant but really even much later. As you say, parents are unique individuals living their own lives. If their choices eventually lead to them being unable to look after themselves, what are the children to do? Let them starve or freeze to death on the street? Like it or…
Spending years of your life rearing a child is your decision and obligation as a parent. It’s not fair to put that on children to care for their parents, particularly when they’re stubborn and when childhood trauma is involved. We didn’t all grow up in good environments.