San Francisco, CA

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Sometimes a family or a family member wants everything done to keep their aging loved one alive. They want to repair their elderly mother, father or spouse once more, no matter how old or how frail the person has become and no matter what the cost—physical or financial.

Indeed, most people today have become accustomed to the commonality of medical miracles over an extended lifespan. As a result, we don't always know when to stop asking for these medical miracles to be performed, and this can prove tragic when it comes to late-life healthcare decisions.

Learning the clinical realities of an aging body helps some people accept the finite passage of time we have on this earth, claims Debra Johnson, a professional geriatric care manager in San Francisco, CA. It is a proven fact that health decline increases with each long-lived year; death will come no matter what steps we take to intervene. And sometimes medical intervention simply lengthens the process of the physical decline.

"How those last years are navigated represents a choice. We must begin to question, and, to some degree, reverse the full-scale medicalization of old age, both in our outlook and in our institutions," says Johnson. Indeed, it's important to understand the aging process itself and how medical intervention affects the natural process of decline both positively and negatively. Only then can family members, spouses, and the elderly themselves make good healthcare choices late in life.

Johnson's father underwent open heart surgery at the age of 80 and chemotherapy and radiation for prostate cancer at the age of 79. The invasive procedures had been recommended by his doctors. "I did not agree with them, but, my dad wanted to extend his life. He loved living and most of all wanted to be with my mom for as many more years as he could squeeze out of his aging body," Johnson explained. "I doubted he had the resilience to bounce back from the toll of biopsies, anesthesia, surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and the trauma of hospitalization. I worried that such treatments would accelerate his downward trajectory, ushering in a prolonged period of decline and dependence — what some people refer to as 'death by intensive care.'

"Thankfully, his projectory of decline was not years but rather months after the heart surgery. He was lucky," she states. "I don't know that people really understand what happens to their bodies as they age" Johnson became interested in the aging process through her work. Now she serves as an advocate for accepting the aging process for what it is: a natural event.

Unlike her father, Johnson hopes to accept her own old age and forgo most interventionist procedures in favor of conscious aging. "I want to use those last years when my body is wearing down to sit quietly with others, to listen deeply to music, to look at myself and at life's journey. That I might be able to deepen my wisdom and prepare for my exit, rather than to suffer through endless medical procedures that might not leave me with enough left over for contemplation of life's mystery, is my plan for growing old"

Johnson's company, Late Life Journey provides geriatric care management services to facilitate aging with grace and dignity to clients in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information on aging gracefully and embracing the humanity of old age through holistic services for the elderly and their families in the journey of late life, visit www.latelifejourney.com.

Debra lyn Johnson

Professional Geriatric Care Manager

Integrative ElderCare: Services for the Late Life Journey

Emeryville, CA

415-572-9716

510-652-7723