A Cranky Old Man

A Cranky Old Man

What do you see nurses?.….What do you see?
What are you thinking.….when you're looking at me?
A cranky old man, .….not very wise,
Uncertain of habit.….with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food.….and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice.….'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice.….the things that you do.
And forever is losing.….A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not.….lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding.….The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking? .….Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse, you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am.….As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding.….as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten.….with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters.….who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen.….with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now.….a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty.….my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows.….that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now.….I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide.….And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty.….My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other.….With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons.….have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me.….to see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, .….Babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children.….My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me.….My wife is now dead.
I look at the future.….I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing….young of their own.
 I think of the years.….And the love that I've known.
I'm now an old man.….and nature is cruel.
It's jest to make old age.….look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles.….grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone.….where I once had a heart.
Inside this old carcass.….A young man still dwells,
And now and again.….my battered heart swells
I remember the joys.….I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living.….life over again.
I think of the years, all too few.….gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact.….that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people.….open and see.
Not a cranky old man.
Look closer.….See

ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an older person who you might brush aside without looking at the young soul within. We will all, one day, be there, too!

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The best and most beautiful things of this world can't be seen or touched. They must be felt by the heart!

Rational Suicide- Part 3

Rational Suicide- Part 3

A Consideration of End-Of-Life Concerns

We Are All Going To Die

“How” Should Be Our Choice

The Last Six Stages to Death

Ageing= Love, independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith

The Canadian Medical Association has finally begun to realize that they are going to be hit with an overload of Dying Old Farts in the near future. They have been engaged in a series of Town Hall Forums across Canada in partnership with MACLEANS magazine to gather and assess the facts about End-Of-Life treatment in order to handle and devise a plan to deal with the problem. Unfortunately only the readers of MACLEANS were aware that they were all televised and could have been watched online. To this point there have been 4 meetings and MACLEANS fortunately has recorded all of them and they can be seen at the link referenced at the conclusion of this post.

1.    Feb 20-      St.John’s, NL

2.    March 24-  Vancouver, BC

3.    April 16-     Whitehorse, YT

4.    May 7-        Regina, SK

They present a stellar group of expert caretakers that have been gathered from nearly all aspects of Terminal Patient Care: Physicians, Nurses, Social workers, Hospital staff, Hospice manager, Nursing home and assisted living volunteers and others.

They are missing the fact it is doubtful the resources they are counting on will be available in time to handle the problem. In my opinion it didn’t matter which profession addressed the panel none of them mentioned the possibility that the growth of resources could not match the need for end-of life-care that will develop in the next thirty years because of the Bloomer Blooming that is now underway. There is no consideration in their planning for any of the threats faced by global warming reducing resources essential to support the demands of the global population. They all blithely assume that when the need arises all the facilities needed to care for our seniors will be available and paid for by somebody else. That quite simply is not going to happen.

With the current availability of resources; the growth of services required will never be met! They are too many. The cost of servicing them to support an aging population of the size anticipated is going to increase exponentially because aging requires changing residences to accommodate the differing stages we encounter with aging.

Simple examples are moving to a planned retirement home and then losing your ability to maintain the place and moving to an assisted living facility. Then you lose your mobility and here comes the wheelchair crowd at the old fogy’s joint and then inability to care for your personal needs and then back to the hospital and the doctors who will make your exit in a cloud of pain killers to handle surgery, radiation, and the horrible agony of chemotherapy side effects.

There are all kinds of needs and endings but the two most horrible in my mind are losing myself to Alzheimer’s, or worst of all; losing my ability to communicate and control my care then be confined to a hospital bed for as long as my personal service immigrant minimum wage girl can keep me alive. Isolation inside your own head, three tasteless feedings of hospital crap that you can then shit out and lie in until girlie comes to wipe your arse does not qualify as a “dignified death”.

Rational suicide is simply the right to get a “dignified death”, when I want one but that is another fight.

Getting back to the CMA, listen carefully to the hair splitting they do when they consider all the ways that ending a life can be done but do not qualify as “Physician Assisted”  suicide.

If you watch one of these m,ake sure you watch the opening of the series at St. Johns Fe 2, 2014. That is ½ hour and effectively is the first half hour of the following three.

I will end this post now and ask you to watch some of the middle and end discussions in the series and make up your own mind whether they are just navel gazing and ignoring external reality re resources availability.

Please check this link out and I will be back with a following post to justify the inclusion of Rational Suicide as an alternative in the End-of-Life discussion.

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/archive-canadas-debate-over-end-of-life-care/

Until later

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

Rational Suicide- Part 2

"Rational Suicide(2)"

Retirement

It’s Something to Consider Seriously!

The Times They Are a’ Changing!

Part 2 of ?

The Last Six Stages to Death

Ageing= Love, independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith

The Aging Process

At the conclusion of Part 1 I left you considering the future that you are now entering and asked you to think about money so let’s start there.

If you are over or nearing the age of 60 if you haven’t already planned on applying for your early Canada Pension Plan do so. Simple monetary fact: you pay a penalty but it is money to be saved but if you manage to last to the target age of 70 you wind up money ahead of the game. Check it out: when I did it took one month of unemployment to qualify for the early pension. That can be obtained with an unpaid leave of employment that most employers will be happy to grant.

The other thing I left you with was a comment about your social circle starting to shrink and that really accelerates on your retirement. If you are the man of the house be prepared to lose most if not all your friends at work. Simple fact is you aren’t there to witness the daily business transactions and relationships and that is what you talk about with your home boys.. You’re out of the loop and contacts are lost. The other thing you must be aware of is that your daily work location is going to move into your wife’s work location and conflict of schedules is almost inevitable. On the assumption that you do have a wife:

Some tips to take seriously

Tip #1:

The first thing to do is sit down and as best you can, estimate what your combined income will be when you retire. You calculate what your fixed income is going to be from all pension plans and hopefully a cash flow from your investments. When you are done take a good hard look at your monthly income because that is what you must survive on until you reach 90. Hopefully your investments are large enough to permit cash withdrawals on an occasional basis because sooner or later you are going to need all you can get to cover your care.

Tip #2:

If it is at all feasible get yourself a debit and credit card and switch to a plastic economy. If you pay on time it costs nothing and the statements provide a complete track of your spending. You can actually create a budget hopefully with a surplus amount to save or handle crises when they arrive. Unfortunately you can count on nasty surprises and unexpected expense. Shit happens!

Tip #3:

Don’t expect your sex drive or sex life to last forever. If you are lucky menopause didn’t cancel your wife’s desire out and she still wants some lovy-dovy.

Even if your partner in bed is willing, sooner or later almost every man will watch Big Red turn into Pinky Dinky and point at the ground. Use it or lose it holds true! That is one of the more nasty surprises you will encounter.

Tip #4:

Expect your memory to start screwing up and you start mistrusting your self about little details. Your car keys and wallet are always where they are supposed to be but when you leave the house you have sudden panic attacks and slap your pockets silly to find and reassure yourself you have keys and cash. You spend half an hour looking for your glasses and discover you’ve got them on, names get hard to remember and if things are not important we’ll just forget them and not bother remembering details.

I’m going to leave you here until the next post to just think about the sequence of events and the repercussions you can foresee from just leaving work, the reduction in income and coming home to roost under one roof. Talk it over with your partner because she’s going to share the same future with you. If you both can foresee problems in your future relationship, adjustments can be made to avoid conflict and keep caring for each other. That is of primary importance.

Having reached awareness of those problems in the first five years, my next post will deal with the physical deteriorations that seem to start at age seventy of even sooner and how to approach and handle them.

Until then

To be continued as

Rational Suicide (3)

Slowly Falling Apart

As soon as I get it written.

Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy

"Rational Suicide"

"Rational Suicide"

It’s Something to Consider Seriously!

The Times They Are a’ Changing!

Part 1 of ?

The Last Six Stages to Death

Ageing= Love, independence, Pain, Dignity, DNR, Faith

May 05, 2014: CBC News published an article on a controversial topic

“John Alan Lee pushes limits of Canada's assisted suicide debate”

Why Controversial?

Because it exceeds the limits of Euthanasia advocacy!

How so?

Lee’s death was not precipitated by a terminal illness or extreme suffering. Instead, it stemmed from Lee’s belief that he’d simply had "enough." He made a well thought out rational decision.
"It’s the Goldilocks problem," Lee said. "Not too soon, but if you wait too long and you end up in care, they won’t let you make that choice anymore. If I ended up in hospital or even a nursing care home, I would be prevented from making that choice and I know people for whom that happened. And they are cautionary tales for me."

They are cautionary tales for all of us and if you are reading this pay very close attention because it is talking about a future that everyone is going to share and you’re included.

Why are you included?

Because you will probably exceed a “natural” life span”

                            

                             What the hell is that?

70!

I base that statement on one made over two thousand years ago. It is based on historical observation of life until then by some very astute men who define the course of a natural life span as follows:

Psalm 90:10 :-: King James Version (KJV)

¹⁰ The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”
This is not a religious statement but a statement of fact that held true for all of history until the turn of the last century when some major developments began to change both society and the physical world.

1.     The world population has reached the point of exhausting the resources necessary for its sustainability as Malthus predicted in the1840’s and is still ignored.

2.    This has been exacerbated by the blooming of Medical Science and its incorporation that began with urbanization at the turn of the last century. That changed the profession into a commercialized industry whose major profits are from life extension.

3.    Pollution from human activity reached a point where global Warming and climate change now threaten the future of the environment.

4.    The monetary system on which the world’s population depends to pay for their daily survival has been co-opted by the Bilderberg Billionaires to the point where 1% of the population controls 99% of the money and a dollar is worth less every year

So Where Does That Leave Us?

Shit Outta Luck

at the mercy of a future we can all see coming but try to ignore.

In the course of the next 50 years the combined negative effects of the four listed Global challenges are going to come to fruition and it’s not going to be pretty. You can foresee shortages in almost near everything needed for survival in a time of impending environmental disasters of ever increasing severity. Sometime and place in that soup of disasters we are all going to die
With the arrival of the Baby Boomer Generation to near retirement age the competition for resources is going to explode and there is no way to predict how or when you will die but one thing is certain is that you are going to keep getting older and you are going to die. The unfortunate fact is that if you last long enough you wind up in total isolation and alone in the care of strangers. Not a nice place to be.
Unfortunately if you are 60 you are not going to put up with the crap ahead for just the next ten years until you reach your natural life span. Thanks to doctors and religion you can look ahead to an additional 20 years in the disaster zone. What I want to convey to all of you is the things that are unpleasant but almost inevitable that can happen on you on your way through the Six Stages To Death.

For simplicity in presentation following is what the aging process can and will probably present to you in the next thirty years of your life- If you last that long. You simply don’t know what or when it will hit you, but you will begin to lose:

1.    Love

2.    independence

3.    Pain

4.    Dignity

5.    DNR

6.    Faith

If you’ve reached the age of sixty you already have noticed your social circle begin to shrink. People start dying: the tempo increases through the first decade or so then it fizzles when the supply starts to dry up. Live long enough, it will and loneliness sucks.
Retirement is a big adjustment and you better get ready because you need a bankroll and if you don’t have a big one, the going can get tough. .
I am going to end here because I am running too long and I want to give anyone who has managed to follow me this far time to think about what is coming ahead. I am following this with a second post devoted to what can be involved in simply going through the process of aging.
It will walk you through what you will encounter with problems mental, physical, societal and fiscal as you continue to wake up each morning and face the coming day!
To be continued as fast as I can write it
Blaine Barrett

TheSmeeGoanGuy