The books pile up these days, and there's so much good information out there that I really want to read them all. Many come through publicists who know I read and write about books on aging, dementia, brain research, pharmaceuticals, and all kinds of caregiving. Many just show up in my mail box, unannounced. 

One of the former, titled My Mother, Your Mother, by Dennis McCullough, M.D., recently rose to the top of the pile and I've spent the last couple of weeks reading it (along with a few others, as I tend to have multiple books lying about, each partly read and heavily marked).

Early on, I'd earmarked McCullough's book for an article I would write for OurAlzheimer's. Last week, after I had finished the book and was checking my e-mails for the day, I saw an alert on a New York Times story titled, "For the Elderly, Being Heard About Life's End," by Jane Gross. I also had received several e-mails from colleagues who had seen the story and knew I'd be interested. For her article, Gross interviewed families and elders about their thoughts as the elders approached life's end.

Fellow blogger Dorian Martin also picked up on the story and wrote about it for OurAlzheimers in a post titled, Slow Medicine: A New Approach to Elders' Quality of Life. She and I have both lost parents to long, slow deaths. Neither of us chose "heroic measures," and as far as I know, there were none offered. But I do know it happens. I do know painful, expensive medical procedures are performed on dying elders- procedures that everyone involved knows won't help them live a longer and/or better quality life. It's just what is done for that particular medical condition.

I couldn't, as I read My Mother, Your Mother, get the image of an aging couple, who were neighbors of mine, out of my head. The elder gentleman had bladder cancer. He was going to die. Please realize that this was about a dozen years ago, and I hope and pray things have improved since then, but this gentleman was in his last painful week of life. He was at home, with no hospice care (which appalls me now, though I had no influence and not a lot of knowledge about it at the time).

According to his very angry widow, who was talking with me a few weeks after the gentleman's death, his doctor scheduled another invasive, horribly painful, expensive - and useless - bladder exam for her husband, "just to see where he is." The anger of this gentle, long-suffering elderly lady was palpable. My own anger grew as I listened. What was this doctor thinking? Was he just after the money he'd get for scheduling one more "procedure?" I don't want to think that, but I don't know what else to think. She was more devastated by what her husband had to endure in that last week than she was about his death. She knew he was dying and had grown to accept it. But this?

The idea that a dying elder can't be left in peace to be with family, and have medication to give comfort without trying to cure what can't be cured, has always been unacceptable to me.