Atul Gawande on Care of Elderly Persons

My mother at Christmas 2007 (her last)

I am deeply moved by Atul Gawande's account of the changes in our brains and bodies as we age--if we are fortunate enough to age.

Many changes occur whether or not we acquire dementia as a result of a stroke or because of Alzheimer's Disease.

In Chapter 2 "Things Fall Apart," Dr. Gawande discusses the process of aging.

Here are some gems from his account:

**  "Remember that for most of our hundred-thousand year existence--all but the past couple hundred years--the average life span of human beings has been thirty years or less" (p. 32).

**  "Our bodies accumulate lipofuscin and oxygen free-radical damage and random DNA mutations and numerous other microcellular problems.  The process is gradual and unrelenting" (p. 35).

**  "Even our brains shrink: at the age of thirty, the brain is a three-pound organ that barely fits inside the skull; by our seventies, gray-matter loss leaves almost an inch of spare room...  The earliest portions to shrink are generally the frontal lobes, which govern judgment and planning, and the hippocampus, where memory is organized... By age eight-five, working memory and judgment are sufficiently impaired that 40 % of us have textbook dementia" (p. 31).

**  "In 1950 children under the age of five were 11% of the US population... those over 80 were 1%....  In thirty years, there will be as many people over eighty as there are under five" (p. 35-36).

**  "...a lot of doctors don't like taking care of the elderly" (p. 36).

**  "The single most serious threat [is]... falling.  Each year, about 350,000 Americans fall and break a hip.  Of those, 40% end up in a nursing home, and 20% are never able to walk again" (p. 40).

     Falling and breaking a hip was my mother's experience twice.  After her second fall at age 85, she had to be in a wheel chair.  Rehab with a walker was not successful.  

** Coughing when drinking water or eating occurs when "lordosis of your spine tips your head forward... Try to swallow while looking up: you'll choke once in a while" (p. 51).

     For my mother, coughing became a big problem in her last few months.  In the last few weeks, she couldn't drink water.  This was partly caused by ALZ-- the inability of her brain to control her swallowing muscles.

Because I will be turning 70 in 2018, I am thinking about aging and mortality.  This book by Gawande, a surgeon in Boston, is a road map for all of us who care for elderly relatives or are in our 60s or 70s or 80s ourselves. 

A year ago I was reading When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanathi, who deeply respected this book by Gawande, but not until this week did I begin Being Mortal.