Celebrating spring in the winter of life

Posted by John Streicker on 1 April 2010 | 0 Comments

Recently, I traveled to be with my parents for a couple of weeks. They are both in their 80’s now and they needed some help. 

Both my parents are hard of hearing. Either the volume on the TV is turned way up, or off. While I was there, they watched a lot of curling. 

This meant that closed captioned “Hard!”  and “Hurry!” would flash vigorously across the silent screen, or else the volume would be so loud, you could hear the skips yelling instructions to their teammates from anywhere in the house.

So communication is a challenge for my folks and some stuff just gets lost in transmission. It can be humorous, except that it is also so tragically isolating.

My Mum has been in and out of hospital several times since the new year. This was the reason that I went to help out. 

Hospital staff were busy and my Mum was not being adequately informed about tests and treatment. As my mother was struggling to get information, the medical team made the mistake of patronizing her.

My Mum has always been a strong advocate for self determination and dignity. Not just for herself, but for everyone. She was one of Canada’s pioneers for advanced health care directives (everyone should have an advanced health care directive).

So when the doctors and interns started assigning procedures without considering my mother’s input, she chose to refuse. She came home yet again from the hospital. Which is fine, except that she remains in need of treatment.

My Mum is frustrated and I suspect that the people involved in her care are frustrated as well. 

As pressure continues to mount on our health system, we will have less time to ensure communication is clear. Ironically, this will create little missteps which will likely put more pressure back on the system.

The family’s role in all if this should be to support.  My job was to try to help make sure that my Mum and Dad were as clear as possible about what was going on, and to assist them in communicating their wishes back. And my role was to just be there.

While I was there, I discovered something odd, that was unrelated to their health. A couple of years ago, my Dad somehow got on a mailing list. Now he receives a lot of junk mail.

Much of this junk mail is telling my Dad that he has won a lot of money. The winnings are generally from a thousand dollars up to several hundred thousand dollars.

You just have to send them in a small amount of money: $10 - $50 to process your winnings. Then they will send you the big bucks.

I know that as all of us read this, we will be saying that of course this is just a scam and that we all know better. Right?

But take a look at the numbers. My Dad gets on average 3 of these letters a day, every day, week in, week out. In the past two years alone that is 1500 letters!

None of these letters is marketing some other product. As far as we can tell, they are not repeats of the exact same letter. In other words they are 1500 separate companies.

At one letter this felt like a scam to me. But at 1500 letters in two years, this unfortunately appears to be a rather successful scam. 

They must be making money from someone out there in order to continue to exist, and I am concerned that the people they are making money from are vulnerable. This includes seniors.

Recently I attended the Aging Wellness Expo in Whitehorse to try and get a better handle on the issues seniors face. They range from health and security through pensions, finance, housing, mobility, access, rights, employment, activity, identity, sex... you name it.

One of the things that surprised me is that the Yukon senior population is projected to double in the coming decade. This means that the issues we face are not just for our own families, but for our community as a whole.

In attending the expo and in getting a chance to reconnect with my own parents, the simple realization that I came to, was that it is about respect. We need to treat people of all ages with the dignity they deserve.

Even though it wasn’t the best of circumstances, spending time with my folks was great. As they face the challenges of aging, they are still full of life. I was reminded through them, just how precious life is.

Happy spring everyone. Happy April 1st, joyeuses Pâques.