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 DON'T DISCARD THE PENSIONERJoan,a senior citizen herself, reflects on a changing society . Anyone who has watched morning television on BBC 1 recently will have seen tiny babies being given every possible help to live and grow. Babies born at twenty-three weeks gestation now survive thanks to a modern medical science. As a retired midwife and health visitor I marvel at the fight these tiny scraps of humanity make to live, to breathe, to grow. Not so many years ago these born babies would have died, their chances of living a full normal life were very small. Most women today who become pregnant look forward to delivering a normal, healthy baby. Modern medicine and care make this the norm and expected. Once the child is born and all is well the family rejoices, mum and dad, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. What about grandparents at the other end of life's span, how do they feel about progress and new skills in medicine? The press and television have reports which talk about such things as 'living wills', the right to die. Not much is said about the dignity of old age, the wisdom gained through years of experience, and that great store of care that older people have to give. More and more people are living beyond the three score years and ten, and living full, interesting lives. Body parts are replaced, new hip and knee joints, open-heart surgery all giving a new lease of life. This all sounds wonderful, but then again there are older people whose bodies let them down with illnesses not so easily treated or cured. It's then that the senior citizen becomes one of the marginalised. They are taking up a hospital bed, they are a drain on the health service. As one recent correspondent wrote in the news paper 'whey should he/she work to pay to support an aging, ailing generation'. In other words these old sick people are past their sell by dates and there is no room in modern medicine for such people. The same appears to apply to the terminally ill and the severely handicapped. The euthanasia lobby say that the sick person should have the right to die, to make a will which states they wish to die by medical means if their illness or condition becomes intolerable. Who decides at which point life should be ended? The General Medical Council is saying that medical treatment should be withdrawn in certain cases. In 'medical treatment' they include food and water, so death is brought about by starvation and dehydration as well as the withdrawal of medicines. Surely good old fashioned nursing is just as important to the old person as the new born infant. Our hospices show this, they are not places of despair, but of life. Care is the all important element. To give the dying person dignity is their aim. It seems a great anomaly to find all the skills and sciences applied to giving life to the infant can be withdrawn when life's span appears to be ending. Are doctors and nurses to develop the 'shipman mentality' and give lethal doses when patient A or B become a nuisance? The babies whose lives were saved by modern science will one day be the old man/woman in the hospital bed. The skills that gave them life can be used against them in their old age. This is not the inheritance to hand on to our children, we are not plants or animals where the weak and frail are removed and left to wilt or die. We are thinking beings and perhaps we should remember the old adage 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you'. Then maybe life at both ends of the scale will be treated with love and care |
