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"[P]hysician and [...] author Louise Aronson's Elderhood is a [...] look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, "old" has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we've made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied. [...] Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that's neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy -- a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself. Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author's own words, "an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being."" --… (more)
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Louise Aronson was a nontraditional medical student, as she majored in history in an undergraduate college that did not require its students to take maths or sciences. She volunteered in a camp for South East Asian refugees, and observing doctors who worked in the camp was influential in her desire to become a physician. She trained in internal medicine, and her love of older people led her to specialize in geriatric medicine.
'Elderhood' is a multifaceted reexamination of old age, from the vantage points of not only medicine and science, but also history, anthropology, literature and popular culture. Aronson uses vignettes of patients who have come under her care, and her own elderly parents, to effectively demonstrate the substandard care that many older people receive in the U.S. health care system, and the medical and non-medical interventions that can help them lead better and more productive lives. She also explores the failings of modern medicine and the larger society as a whole in their treatment of the elderly. She notes that medical schools in the U.S. provide very little education about the field of geriatrics to their students, and due to the emphasis on curative over caring medicine, technological and pharmaceutical interventions over patiently listening to the stories of the elderly, subspecialty care over holistic approaches, and the disparity in pay between generalists and specialists, geriatrics is viewed as a far lesser field of medicine by medical faculty, residents, and students alike. As a result there is a severe shortage of geriatricians practicing in the United States, which is a major barrier in ensuring that most older people receive adequate medical care.
She makes a strong case for dividing older people into groups, based on their age (early, middle and advanced old age), similar to the distinctions between infants, toddlers, young children, tweens and adolescents in pediatrics. There is a huge difference between a healthy working 60 year old, a retired 75 year old with chronic but manageable health conditions living independently, and a 90 year old suffering from advanced dementia who is wheelchair bound and living in a nursing home. And, not all elderly people of similar ages are the same. We all know people in their 60s who could run circles around us, and at the same time others of the same age who will likely die soon. Serious illnesses like cancer can quickly transform an active and healthy septugenerian into a markedly aged person, and many of us have watched as a seemingly invincible older parent, relative or close friend transforms into a frail elderly adult in seemingly the blink of an eye.
Aronson describes the barriers she has faced from her immediate supervisors and the UCSF administration in trying to provide care to her patients, and that combined with her growing physical problems led to a severe case of burnout. Her frustrations with UCSF's electronic medical record system and with administrative bureaucracy match those that nearly all physicians face at some point in their careers, but she successfully overcame them and designed a workplace that was both personally fulfilling and beneficial to her elderly patients.
'Elderhood' is a refreshing, insightful and holistic analysis of the elderly from different disciplines, both within and outside of medicine, and is an excellent addition to written work about this increasingly more important population in Western societies. I was personally somewhat disappointed, though, as I unfairly expected 'Elderhood' to focus primarily on the medical aspects of the care of the elderly, and assist me in caring for my octogenarian parents. The different topics covered in this book made it seem somewhat disjointed, and her repeated insistences that elderly people need to be respected and treated differently by the medical community in particular and society at large was overkill. Despite my criticisms I highly recommend this book to medical professionals, and to those who are or soon will care for elderly parents or relatives, or enter elderhood themselves.
Sadly, Aronson does not offer solutions for all these things. Some things- such as affordable housing for the aging population that keeps them safe but allows independence- probably have no easy solutions. But she offers a lot to think about, a lot of things to start the conversation about these problems and how to remedy them.
The author is a geriatrician and has been caregiver to an aging mother. She, herself, is officially ‘old’. For a good while, she was a home visit physician and saw all manner of situations the elderly were living in- some horrific, but with no affordable way to change them. She is well placed to write about the care of the aging population.
It’s an interesting and accessible read, despite the technical subjects. But it has its flaws; it wanders at times, and it’s a bit long on the author’s education and how she found her way to gerontology. I found some sections slow reading- but that is due to my own interests, not a problem with the writing. I feel it’s an important book; 10,000 people turn 65 every single day in the US alone, and all should be treated with dignity and good care (as should everyone, of any age or medical status). This book stands as a wake-up call.
Now the positives. I liked learning about geriatrics. I feel a geriatrician is
And I did feel inspired to bookmark one thing. Why do we all hesitate to call ourselves "old"? "Imagine a forty- or fifty-year-old saying, 'I don't like to think of myself as an adult. I'm just a kid who's been around a few extra years.'" Well, actually, I can and do know at least one person who's said something to that effect, so, not so shocking... "Or a children's hospital that eschews the term 'child' because of its association with immaturity, and instead markets itself as serving short, unemployed people." OK, that part is funny to imagine.
Those closer to (or in) the third act of life (after childhood and adulthood), should benefit from a better understanding of what to expect and plan for. I hope younger readers will gain a better understanding and appreciation of their possible future and what their elders are facing now.