How much to save for retirement

[dualstow]

Was able to move the Covid fork to its own thread.
I’ll leave the parental care here because it’s expensive and thus related, and I’m too lazy to extricate it

Covid continued ⇢ viewtopic.php?p=249515#p249515

[sophie]

You might be able to get a directive to not feed you, then when you start starving/dehydrating, be put into hospice (morphine drip). Hideous. Maybe I should get that Wingsuit.

Yes, advance directives are very important and you should get that done. Make it as specific as you can, because many of them are too vague to provide useful guidance in real life situations. Definitely no CPR, intubation, or feeding tubes under any circumstances. I'm thinking to revise mine to explicitly refuse all preventive care (including vaccines) after age 75, and comfort care only after age 80.

Sophie, are you saying no CPR, feeding tube, or intubation at any age? I guess you mean, from the age you are now (which I don't really know) or would you never have wanted those things?

That's your decision of course, but I've seen way too many cardiac arrest cases to have any interest in CPR. CPR in the field has a good outcome about 0% of the time once you're over 50. CPR in the hospital is better simply because it happens quicker, but if you're in the hospital having a cardiac arrest the chances are very low indeed that that you'll survive the hospitalization.

Similarly, feeding tubes that are in temporarily for something like having bowel surgery is one thing, but a feeding tube because you can't eat due to a stroke or other neurodegenerative condition....forget it. It's a heroic life-extending treatment in a low quality of life setting at that point. No thank you.

You can say something similar about intubation: if it's a short term thing, it may be acceptable. The problem is that you don't know if it's going to be short term, and the likelihood of emerging from a condition requiring intubation when you're over 65 with all your faculties as intact as they were before the condition hit, is just about zero. And there's no way you can predict all the future situations where intubation might or might not be acceptable. So probably the best way to go is a blanket refusal of intubation but with a health care proxy who can negotiate on your behalf, and can reverse that refusal depending on the situation.