Leah

“This was not the average retirement community, but even in an average one rent runs $32,000 a year. Entry fees are typically $60,000 to $120,000 on top of that. Meanwhile, the median income of people eighty and older is only about $15,000. More than half of the elderly living in long-term-care facilities run through their entire savings and have to go on government assistance—welfare—in order to afford it. Ultimately, the average American spends a year or more of old age disabled and living in a nursing home (at more than five times the yearly cost of independent living),”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“It is not death that the very old tell me they fear. It is what happens short of death—losing their hearing, their memory, their best friends, their way of life. As Felix put it to me, “Old age is a continuous series of losses.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“In the horrible places, the battle for control escalates until you get tied down or locked into your Geri-chair or chemically subdued with psychotropic medications. In the nice ones, a staff member cracks a joke, wags an affectionate finger, and takes your brownie stash away. In almost none does anyone sit down with you and try to figure out what living a life really means to you under the circumstances, let alone help you make a home where that life becomes possible”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“I’m in dread of what would happen if she becomes too hard for me to care for,” he said. “I try not to think too far ahead. I don’t think about next year. It’s too depressing. I just think about next week.”
It’s the route people the world over take, and that is understandable. But it tends to backfire. Eventually, the crisis they dreaded arrived”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End