When we’re old and grey

None of us really likes to think about getting old, or to watch our parents growing older and frailer. But it must be especially heart-wrenching when we see them, in what should be their twilight years, reduced to mere numbers and statistics as the health sector groans under the heavy weight of an aging population.

Mater Dei, we have a problem. Ailing people admitted as emergency cases who require immediate medical attention are in corridors while those who require long-term care, because of their advanced age, are taking up precious beds.

The Medical Association of Malta was quoted as saying that 140 elderly patients are blocking 60 per cent of acute medical care beds. “These are mainly social cases and the causes are attributed by the doctors union to “lack of planning and investment in the geriatric sector”.”

The term “social cases” is used to describe elderly people who are bedridden and whose relatives (for whatever reason) are unable or unwilling to take them home, while they await admittance into a home for the elderly, for which there are long waiting lists. 

It is incredibly depressing to think that in our old age we can expect to be reduced to such a state: shunted from one bed to the other because no one has the time, or inclination, to care for us.  

Whereas the extended family in the past used to carry this responsibility for elderly relatives almost as a given, with Nanna and Nannu (and sometimes even an elderly aunt or uncle) being welcomed into the family home with no questions asked, today’s nuclear family wants to remain just that: nuclear. 

People are busy, busy, busy, their lives are jam-packed with activities and the last thing they need (or want) is the “burden” of having to care for someone who is no longer able to live by him or herself. 

The changing role of women also means that what was taken for granted in the past no longer holds. No one can just assume that the woman in the family will automatically take on the caretaker role of aging relatives as used to happen until fairly recently, because after all she’s “just” a housewife …with the assumption that one more person to take care of is not going to make much of a difference to her anyway. 

And to be honest, if a couple does not agree with re-arranging their lives to include an aging relative then it will spell big trouble for their relationship. Any changes within the family dynamic can create upset, and it is understandable that there might be resistance from one side or the other to accommodating a frail or bedridden member of the family.  It is clear from the number of social cases that this type of dilemma has become more and more common. 

I would hazard a guess that the problem has become even more acute with the reality of broken homes and second (and third?) families where the ties with one’s original in-laws and even parents have become more and more tenuous. If you are no longer on speaking terms with older members of the family to whom you were only related to by marriage, or if you have become estranged from your own parents because of domestic strife, then one can hardly expect that you will be their carer as they enter old age. Isolation becomes a way of life as the family circle changes or shrivels up altogether. 

This is just like we expect or assume that sons and daughters will take care of their own parents in times of need, and yet you have so many, many elderly people in homes who tell you that their children barely come to visit them. Or else they prefer to leave them in a hospital bed for months on end as a “problem” for the state to solve. Life should not turn out so cruelly, but so often it does. 

It is a sad reflection on the way the fabric of our society has changed that parents are “expected” to take on the additional responsibility of small grandchildren but then so very little thought is given to them when it is their turn to be taken care of.

Our free healthcare system has, I think, moulded us into completely self-centred beings who lump all our duties into the lap of the welfare system. We brush off that which is seen as too bothersome; we don’t want our lives disrupted one iota.  

But, unfortunately, that is the way things are, so the question begs itself: what is the solution?

One suggestion which was made in Parliament a few months ago was that it is social cases which should be in the corridor while the acute, emergency cases should always take priority. This, it was claimed, would be the only way to make families whose relatives were taking up much-needed beds, fully appreciate that it was they who needed to take the responsibility of their elderly. 

Obviously, however, you cannot force anyone to take in an elderly relative and doing so only means you might be putting the old person into a potentially risky situation of abuse if he/she is not wanted. 

The only other answer is therefore for the government and/or private enterprise to step in, in the form of a geriatric hospital which specifically cares for those in need of long-term medical care. This would not be an old people’s home per se, but would cater for those who require full-time care within a fully-equipped hospital.

With all the money I see swirling around, it is in this area which the government should be investing, possibly in partnership with the private sector. An existing derelict building could be identified and refurbished accordingly, thus giving work to the construction industry (since they seem to be the “teacher’s pets” of this government) while avoiding yet more unnecessary development on new land. 

Let us focus on this as a priority, before any newfangled dubious University, before yet another unnecessary monster of a supermarket, before yet more green lights to gaming companies who swivel their eyes towards our shores. 

For if there is one thing which is guaranteed is that old age is inevitable, and one day it could be us in some bed, in some corridor, waiting piteously and helplessly until someone comes to take care of us.