Showing results for "Modern Englishes" in Aging Parents

In elderhood, the health care system has a narrow view of how to provide care. It focuses on extending a patient's life at all costs, with an over-reliance on machines and procedures, instead of caring holistically for the person. Accordingly, many of us will likely spend our final weeks in long-term care facilities or an ICU. Dying at home, peacefully, and surrounded by family is almost impossible in our world—and our fear of death is a major contributor to this impossibility.

In this book, author and biologist Marcy Houle shares her personal journey of caring for her father, a surgeon, who developed Alzheimer's disease, and later her mother, who succumbed to other medical conditions.Like many children of aging parents, Marcy often felt powerless traveling this sad trajectory - watching them fall through the cracks of a fragmented and confusing healthcare system, where professionals often wrote off their symptoms as "just old age".