Age and pills
Some might say that when a columnist has to resort to ‘linking’ Rust readers to way-out stories on the Daily Mail website that he or she has gone beyond scraping the barrel, but today I couldn’t possibly comment.
According to doctors, medical specialists, friends and indeed carers, the fact that my nonagenarian father ordinarily takes no medication at all – despite his quip, when asked the pertinent question by any professional, “Just whisky and water” – is remarkable.
By this statement, I taken them to be implying that, statistically and/or simply in terms of geriatric medical normalities and the physiology of the human body, a large enough majority of people over a certain age (shall we say 75) are taking pills for something – whether that be a medical condition or ailment, or just to correct anticipated vitamin deficiencies – that for someone over the age of 90 not to be taking anything at all as a matter of routine is an unusual enough occurrence for it to qualify as worthy of note.
Of course, when dealing with this topic, all things are relative and not necessarily as straightforward as they might seem at first.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously on this website the time my parents went back to see their GP after my mother, suffering from dementia but then still living at home without carers in attendance, had spent a month taking some recommended new ‘wonder’ drug intended to pep up her memory and/or general mental performance.
The GP opened proceedings by lobbing in my father’s direction the inquiry “Have you noticed any difference?”, to which my father’s slightly chippy response had been “Compared to what, exactly?”.
In a way, one could relate to both sides of the exchange.
The GP had been after signs of improvement my father might have noticed in my mother’s mental alertness and/or performance, whilst my father was registering that it was difficult to know how to answer when he had no means of knowing how much worse my mother might have become over the previous month if she hadn’t been taking the new pills.
Which brings me to another point regarding my father’s supposedly ‘remarkable’ lack of need for medication at his advanced age.
Life is a terminal condition and clearly, as we all get older, it is inevitable that things begin to creak, protest, fall off and gradually deteriorate or decline.
I’m not being unfair to him, but it is a fact that my father is no longer the man he was at 85, still less at 80, 75 or even as he was at the age of 60 (to exaggerate my thrust for its present purpose).
Never mind whether he’s still capable of functioning at 92 – and perhaps even might be doing better than most of his age, even to a ‘remarkable’ extent – the question it raises is as to whether, instead of operating at the ‘reduced’ level that he has now reached, rather than hailing or lauding his current ability to cope with life without any medication (beyond whisky and water), one should perhaps be filling him up with pills – whether proven and recommended, or currently just at the experimental stage – which might perk up his mind so that he could operate as if he was still 90, or 88, or even 85?
Plus, on the side, there’s another issue – does any of this actually matter in the scheme of things, not least the history of the universe?
Which returns me to where I came in …
Here are links to two articles that I spotted today on the website of the Daily Mail:
Firstly, a piece by Ben Spencer and Pat Hagan on a new study which claims that the number of Britain’s over-65s taking at least five pills per day has quadrupled over the past two decades – CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY STUDY FINDINGS
And then, secondly – and please don’t ask me why there should have been any connection between these two articles, unless it is the facetious one that, if the second hasn’t already explained the pill-taking explosion reported in the first, it may well do so when this news gets out(!) – a report by Claudia Tanner upon a new version of Viagra-like (but far stronger) drug that deals with erectile dysfunction issues – SOON AVAILABLE ON THE NHS?
