Tuesday, October 7, 2025

MODULE 4: What is it like to be old?

Announcements

  1. movie tab
  2. annotations grading
  3. RR16 -- read bracketed passages -- give page numbers 
_________________________

Module 4 -- old age

  • What it's like being really old (Gawande)
  • Old age as a worse time of life (DeBeauvoir)
  • Old age as a better time of life (Cicero, Carstensen)
  • Old age as a stage with its own set of goods (Kazez)
  • Oct 24 -- Exam 2
_________________________

Early old age -- 60s and 70s -- probably you know people at this stage
Advanced old age -- 80s, 90s, 100s -- an unknown country?

How we'll learn about advanced old age: 

Atul Gawande (pronounced Atool Gawandee) 

Video clips

_________________________

Being Mortal

Amazing, memorable facts from chapter

Main topics
  • Death used to occur at any age, now more often in advanced old age, and after a series of medical problems and interventions





  • Why do we age?
    • "The story of aging is the story of our parts" (40)
      • teeth (41), brains (43), muscles, heart, arteries, eyes, hair
    • "as the defects in a complex system increase, the time comes when just one more defect is enough to impair the whole, resulting in the condition known as frailty" (46)
  • Can we cure old age?
    • "there is 'no single, common cellular mechanism to the aging process'" -- "we just fall apart" (47)
    • so no cure for aging (later we'll read an opposing view)
  • Becoming dependent
    • "by age eight-five....40 percent of us have textbook dementia" (43)
    • importance of preventing falls 
    • "the average American spends a year or more of old age disabled and living in a nursing home" (62-63)
  • Vignettes
    • Jean-lives alone, geriatrician focuses on feet (49)
    • Alice (the author's mother-in-law)-lives with husband, car accident, victim of scam, husband looks for skilled nursing (55)
    • Felix & Bella- geriatrician who retires at 82, and wife who is blind (60)
  • Geriatric medicine -- "97% of medical students take no course in geriatrics" (67)
_________________________


Video clips


Jane Goodall at age 91 (8 days before she died)

 


_________________________


GEORGE ETZWEILER (6 mins)
Still running at 98


_________________________

RESIDENTS OF JEWISH RETIREMENT HOME (5 minutes)




_________________________


MARY IN PENNSYLVANIA (10 mins)



_________________________