Doctors ARE too quick to write off the elderly
Speaking at the Hay Festival last week, actress and author Sheila Hancock, 89, had some advice for older people: don’t always listen to doctors when it comes to recovery and prognosis — especially if you’re old, she said. after she broke her wrist while shaving her legs, she was told she would never be able to drive again. However, she defied the doctors, did her physiotherapy and her hand now works perfectly.
Medical professionals, she said, were inclined to dismiss older patients, assuming they would struggle to recover from accidents. She added that doctors failed to recognise the determination of their elderly patients to recover.
‘Doctors are lovely, but don’t believe everything they say when you get old because they are apt to say, “Well, at your age...” no, defy them — show them they are wrong!’
i actually agree with this. i do think doctors tend to be too ready to dismiss older people based on nothing more than their age and a vague notion that the elderly are a bit decrepit.
THiS view is not only ageist, but it fails to take into account that plenty of older people are — how shall i put this? — rather stubborn, especially when it comes to accepting that their age means they might not recover or could have to put up with a disability.
Of course, determination can’t turn us into spring chickens. We all have to accept the limitations that come with getting older. But Hancock’s right that attitude — a refusal to simply give in and give up — is an important part of getting better.
Older people have experience to draw on and they have the time to dedicate to recovery.
i’m reminded how, years ago, psychotherapy was believed to be a waste of time for older people. They’re too set in their ways, went the argument.
But studies have shown not only do older generations do very well in therapy, but they tend to have better outcomes than their younger counterparts.
The reason for this is that they actually attend appointments and do the necessary work in between sessions. They toil hard to get better and are motivated to make the most of resources.
Older people appreciate that life is finite, and they want to get better as quickly as possible.
They put the work in. and i think this is true in many areas of medicine.
prognosis can be a tricky business. There will always be patients who defy expectations, who go against all the odds. it’s also an incredibly difficult balancing act between not giving false hope on the one hand, and not being too bleak and negative on the other.
Medics don’t have a crystal ball, so they can only make suggestions on people’s chances of recovery based on average outcomes. inevitably, we’ll be wrong at times.
When my gran was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, doctors gave her a 5 per cent chance of survival. They explained she’d have to have extensive treatment including gruelling chemotherapy, as well as drink vast amounts of fluid every day for months. Most patients, she was told, struggle to do this, so she was advised to have palliative care instead. She felt that, because she was in her late 70s, the doctors had simply given up on her. i admit i did wonder myself whether she’d have been treated differently if she had been a decade younger. it all smacked a bit of her being dismissed — the attitude of, ‘Oh well, she’s had a good innings’, rather than, ‘Let’s give this a go’.
But my gran took this as a challenge. She was absolutely determined to do everything she could to be in that 5 per cent.
‘i’ll show them,’ she said when she got back home. She was damned if she was going to pop her clogs without a fight.
She approached her treatment with military determination and, against all the odds, beat the cancer and lived for another ten years.
Maybe she was just incredibly lucky. Maybe she was simply a medical marvel.
But i like to think at least part of it was down to that thing doctors so often fail to take into account but can make all the difference: bloody-mindedness.
WEREN’T the Jubilee celebrations wonderful? I don’t consider myself a fervent royalist, but I felt emotional seeing the Queen’s dedication and service honoured. At a time when everything feels uncertain, scary and bleak, she represents a reassuring continuity, discipline and stoicism.