Woke up yesterday morning to a radio interview with Ira Rosofsky. His new book is Nasty, Brutish, and Long. Subtitle? "Adventures in Old Age and the World of Eldercare."
Now, clearly, I have a personal interest in this; Rosofsky sounded as though he had just had a long talk with my father.
However, the interview was intriguing enough that I first heard of the book at 7:30AM, reserved it at the bookstore at 9:30, picked it up at 6PM, and finished it at 2 this morning - not my typical reaction to books on eldercare.
The author is a psychologist who works with residents of nursing homes (mostly the elderly.) He writes with both empathy and frustration - with the homes, with the insurance, government, and pharmaceutical "players," and sometimes with the residents themselves. It makes it an easy read because he really understands the difficulties in care and communication.
Some simple facts of which I was not aware: "If you are 65, your lifetime chances of spending time in a nursing home are 43 percent." (If you manage to avoid this industry as a patient, you'll probably deal with it as the child of a patient.)
Further: "12% of people between 65 and 74 are in nursing homes compared to one-third of those between seventy-five and eighty-four. If you live to 85, your chances are better than one in two."
Much as we think we'll control this aspect of our lives, we probably won't. We will go into the hospital for a broken hip, or pneumonia, and just won't heal well enough to live at home. You don't go shopping for a nursing home; you take whatever bed is open in your town when you happen to need it.
I truly believe that what passes for a medical system in this country will be finally crushed under the burden of elderly baby boomers. (The largest medical cost for the average person is incurred in the last year of life.) But we don't even have the underpinnings of an eldercare system - and the stuff is about to hit the fan; the first baby boomers are over 70.
This book is very readable, highly educational, even sometimes funny. If your parents are aging, or (sorry to say this) you've planned for your old age but firmly closed your eyes to this, or if you're just interested in the medical non-system in this country, the book is probably worth picking up, or borrowing from the library.
