Today, I just want to provide links to two articles that everyone in this country should get the chance to read. The first one is "How Doctors Stymie the Wishes of the Elderly" The second one, posted yesterday, is "The Elderly As a Source of Profit". Read them and weep.

Yesterday on one of NPR's numerous Sunday magazine-style shows, there was a piece concerning a man who had suffered a brain injury and been in a coma for a significant period of time. When he came out of the coma, his speech sounded very slow and labored ... to everyone else. In one segment of the program, the host told of the first time that ( Read more... )

It doesn't happen ever day, not even many days; but one of the problems that arises when one arrives in his or her late 70s is a failure to get a second wind, when that is the usual routine of the individual's day. In my case, I can usually keep going from the time I get out of bed until about 1:30 p.m. and then have a renewed upswing in energy ( Read more... )

As I was having a cream cheese and jelly sandwich on raisin bread this morning, I was recalling some favorite foods of my youth, how often I ate them, and their reputation for increasing people's weight. Every time I would order a sandwich at a lunch counter (which in the 1950s was actually a counter, often in what we called a drug store), it ( Read more... )

I realize that a lot of my friends and relatives are befuddled by my avoidance of doctors, hospitals, almost anything that comprises U.S. "health care." Well, this morning, my resolve was again strengthened.

The news included the death of Andy Rooney yesterday. The newscaster sort of slid over the part that said Rooney died in a New York hospital ( Read more... )