Pill-popping old people

Did you know, that the average number of pills taken by Australian elderly people (elderly being above 80) is 10 pills?!

TEN bloody pills!

Imagine being old, and forgetting half the things you do that day, and having to sort out which pill to take when, and what these pills are for....

Part of the problem is, us damn doctors are too lazy to try to figure out which pills they don't really need, especially the ones they have been taking since they were 30.

You could almost hear doctors say: "Ah what harm can it do if they continue to take it, they have been on it for Nx1000 years what, what for I take them off now. Besides, I earn more if they take more pills..."

Man, if I had my way, I would force all doctors to take all 10 of those pills for 2 years, and see how they feel about it. Not just the having-to-remember-what-pill-to-take-and-when part, but also the omg-these-pills-are-making-me-nuts part.

Or maybe I should get all doctors to take salt+pepper+vinegar+ginger+garlic+onion+bitterguord+oystersauce+chilli+tomato+roticanaikuah+tomyum+egg+yongtaufoo. Maybe top it off with some rojak. That's probably how old people feel when they take all those pills. making-me-nuts.

Anyway, on a seperate note, please do take care of your health. You may be invincible now, but next thing you know, you may be asking me the same question:

"Doc, I can't remember whether it was the blue pill i was supposed to take, or the pink one?"

Caring for the elderly

I was brought up with the traditional Malaysian attitude on caring for the elderly. The rule was simple:

Look after your parents when they get old, let them live at home with you if they're too old to look after themselves. Send them to a nursing home, and you're a bastard.

Life is quite simple when you follow ready and set rules and norms like the above. But then you grow up, and you start thinking about the 'rules' or 'norms' and start analyzing them.

I have just started learning about the aged care services offered to Victorians here in Australia, and I am impressed. Their services range from providing transport, personal, social, medical support to the home of the elderly, to offering respite for carers of the elderly, to case managers to tend to the elderly's every need, to low and high care residential homes.

Frankly speaking, they seem to offer it all, a wide range to suit the different needs of every elderly individual.

That made me think: Is caring for our parents and letting them live with us when they can no longer care for themselves really the best option for everyone?

I know a lot of homes where grandparents are the main carers for grandchildren at home, while both parents go off to work. In most cases, that's just swell, because the two generations of people enjoy eacho ther's company. But what happens when grandparents become old, frail, and delicate? Is it wise to risk leaving them at home unattended or with little children, to risk them having a fall and breaking their hip, to risk them having a stroke? What happens when they suffer from a degenerative brain disease, like alzheimer's, where they need constant supervision for all their personal and social activities of daily living, where they might experience personality and behavioural change, and may even experience paranoid delusions about otheir own family?

And what happens when grandparents get left at home all alone when all they want to do is to socialize?

This is where i feel the different services offered in Victoria work so well. They have services tailored to addressing each and every problem an elderly person may experience, and help the elderly in achieving their goals and needs, be it in the form of providing service to the elderly's home, or in the form of residential houses/retirement villages that supervise and care for the elderly.

In fact, some of these places offer better care than even the most filial of children!

I think i'm ready to go against the rule or norm. I don't think i'll ever offer to get my parents into a residential home, but I definitely think I will allow them the freedom of choosing what they feel is best for them. If they enjoy living at home with me, that's great; but if they need or want more care/support, I will not insist that they stay with me just so i can fulfil my filial obligations. They deserve better.

The only problem: When is the taboo of anything other than letting parents live at home ever going to be lifted in Malaysia to allow the development of a proper aged care system like that of Victoria?

Only time will tell.