PM podcast: "Sandwich Generation" & dealing with aging parents.

[newwifenewlife]

Today's PASSIONATELY MARRIED podcast is on the "Sandwich Generation" & dealing with aging parents. For those with aging parents (and for those who will eventually have them ), you might want to give a listen and see if there's a conversation you need to have with your spouse or parents...or kids.

"Sandwich Gen. and dealing with aging parents...

[newwifenewlife]

Personally, I found it with some good food for thought about the dying process, death, caring for aging parents and modeling for kids. Both DW & I have parents who are out-of-state and 400-650 miles away and ranging in age from 71-87 and with my wife's previous work (home health & companion care) and now career (therapy), she sees the dying process in patients daily. (She had a therapy patient pass over the weekend just into his 50's from diabetes.) She's seen the ugly from physical health deterioration to working with Alzheimers and dementia patients.

DW & I have both made the DNR choice and desiring no life-saving measures that would only prolong death and leave us hampered with a poor quality of life, let alone much at all. Of course, it's important to communicate that to our children, parents, and siblings, and more so in a blending family situation so that there's no confusion about what our personal wishes are if a hard choice needs to be made. (My wife tells her kids & parents and I tell mine. This also helps bridge the gap of conversation with them if one hasn't had it with one's parents...as well as potential spiritual conversations.) It also hits home when a close family friend passed away Palm Sunday weekend. He was done with the life-saving measures. His kidney transplant of over 30 years had cancer and his body was in organ failure so he was done fighting and he told them to take him off the vent and he meet Jesus. He was cognizant enough to make his wishes known to his wife and adult children but...the following questions to come to mind.

- do our kids know our desires now before an issue arises?
- Do our parents & siblings know what we personally want?
- Do we know what our parents want?
- Is chemo at 80-90 years of age worth the process for the quality of remaining life that one may have? Worth the nest egg reduction for the remaining spouse for the quality of life they'll have left?
- Is a heart transplant and pacemaker worth the install when the body or brain will not last as long as the heart or pacemaker?
- Are we, or our children, that afraid of dying and it's natural process that such extraordinary, life-saving measures need to be taken to prolong something that is inevitable? (Paul said "For me to live is Christ but to die is gain.")

[Oldbear]

Probably should listen to know how our kids will manage and care for us!!!

[IntimateMoment]

Kids grow up and more and more live far from their parents. Too far too help long term. The issue is complicated and will only get more so as cures for cancers become available. Hopefully when we start seeing life expectancy increased to 110 or even 140 the first 100 years will be more like 40-50 is not 50 years of needing assistance. When we start setting records for longevity and the first person hits 123 and keeps going it might be the 70 year old great grandchildren called upon to help care for them.

[vazny]

Kids grow up and more and more live far from their parents. Too far too help long term. The issue is complicated and will only get more so as cures for cancers become available. Hopefully when we start seeing life expectancy increased to 110 or even 140 the first 100 years will be more like 40-50 is not 50 years of needing assistance. When we start setting records for longevity and the first person hits 123 and keeps going it might be the 70 year old great grandchildren called upon to help care for them.

I see this prolongation in our country, where people died much earlier under communism: on the contrary, it prolongs the "dysfunctional" life, when a person already needs dozens of drugs and a lot of help. There is talk that Alzheimer's and cancer is a "tax" for antibiotics, because most people would not live long enough to develop tumors and dementia without ATBs.

[OnlyByGrace]

Kids grow up and more and more live far from their parents. Too far too help long term. The issue is complicated and will only get more so as cures for cancers become available. Hopefully when we start seeing life expectancy increased to 110 or even 140 the first 100 years will be more like 40-50 is not 50 years of needing assistance. When we start setting records for longevity and the first person hits 123 and keeps going it might be the 70 year old great grandchildren called upon to help care for them.

While IntimateMoment appears to no longer be a member, I will still respond to this.
We are seeing, as the current Baby Boomers are living longer, that the age of retirement is also being pushed out. If we start to see the average life expectancy pushing out to 110 or even to 140, and if we have good health for longer, then 70 year old great-grandchildren will be working for longer, possibly still paying off their housing and other lifestyle debts. If living to an average of140 with good health, we would likely be working until after 100!

*I shudder to think what the world would be like if we did have an average lifespan of 110-140 years? We have finite resources and earth is struggling now, let alone with the increased population that this would naturally bring. Unless there were less babies being born... but that would be less humans to grow into adults and work/pay taxes to support the aging and/or unemployed/under-employed population. Governments already have reduced income from taxes because the Baby Boomers generation is larger than later generations and taxes are lower than ever before. Personal debt is increasing at rates unknown in recent history, so taking time off work to tend to the needs of elderly parents won't be possible or practical.

[DoveGrey]

Life expectancy in the US has been falling since 2020.* The children born today have a lower life expectancy than their parents - the first time that's happened in our nation's history. That's something we worry about in my profession, but I'm not sure how widely known it is.

That's not important right now for those of us in the sandwich generation (which I entered officially about a month ago), but it's something to think about. I may not be able to rely on my 70 year old grandchildren to take care of me. Furthermore, if our retirement age gets pushed back, how are the 70 year olds going to have the time? Or the cognitive ability to keep working long enough to amass the capital they need to retire

There are so many factors at play here, but we've got to do something about it or we're all in trouble.

*
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph- ... -about-it/