I have stopped
saying, “Wish you a long and happy life”
for anyone’s birthday. Happy yes, but
long? Instead it is better to wish good health and peace of mind for the coming
years. The life span in India was around 65, when people died peacefully at home with the family around
them. Today thanks to technological advancements and the wonder of surgery,
life is prolonged and it is quite common to hear of people living well into
their nineties and touch the score of “100 not out”!
When children nurture
their parents, with loving care, they remain in fairly good health. Even if they fall seriously ill, they get bailed out
and resume their normal lives. What one
should examine is the quality of life led by senior citizens. If they are lingering, besieged with ill
health, dogged by mobility problems, lonely and without family around them the
long life they have been blessed with is certainly not rewarding. The
“children” who are caregivers, are themselves elderly with their own health
problems, and find it difficult to
physically care for their aged parents.
Unable to handle
finances themselves, the aged parents hand them over to their children, keeping
“a little something” for themselves.
Unfortunately a little something is not enough to keep going, and as a
result, it is the children who finally have to shell out enormous amounts of
money to pay hospital bills, and the guilt syndrome compounds the burden of old
age. What then is the answer?
Medical insurance is a
necessity, taken when one is in good health. The premium increases as you grow
older, but believe me it is worth it. A major surgery and a weeks stay at a
good hospital, cost Manorama a tidy sum
of ₹ 2 ½ lakhs and since she was in her nineties she had no insurance cover.
Rangarajan her cousin, in his eighties, had a successful orthopaedic surgery,
but developed post operative complications, which forced him to stay over three
weeks in hospital costing him ₹ 3 ½ lakhs. Home nursing, or even trained help,
costs about ₹ 350-400 per day for one shift, and the attenders will not do
anything more than look after the patient. Full time maids are a thing of the
past.
Setting aside money to
cover contingencies is not an extravagance. Just think of it as money spent and
not available to you. This way the health deposit will earn compound interest
and comes in handy in times of crisis.
Not all of us can afford to put away a large sum of money. Here is when understanding children can
contribute to the fund which in turn will help them deal with the situation.
Better this than buying unwanted gizmos like i pads, smart phones and gadgets which
are redundant as they don’t know how to use them. This again is a sensitive
issue, and none of us really wish to go to our children with begging bowls! Old
age is layered with ifs and buts, without any guarantees that everything will
turn out fine, but at least one can plan and hope for the best. When we are
flush with youth, energy and success, old age with its attendant problems seems
too far away to be of concern, and when the wave hits you, it is too late to
retract or start the planning.
Retirement homes are
now possible without any of the stigmas that were previously attached to them.
It just means change of residence, often to the outskirts of the city you live
in, and sometimes to another area entirely. The challenge of compromise and giving up the old style of
living falls on the elderly. Imagine a life without wondering if your
maid/cook/driver will turn up! Or having to worry about what to cook and how to
get to the hospital or bank! One drawback is that you live with a community of
old people without the young to walk in and out to rejuvenate lives.
This led me to start a
voluntary organisation called Udhavi. I formed a core group of dedicated
volunteers, drawn from our circle of friends, and a couple of them are also
Club members. We offer assisted living.
Our spotlight is on the elderly
who live on their own without their children, most of them living abroad.
Udhavi offers visits to people, conversing with them, offering to accompany
them to the bank or shopping, maybe a movie, and teaching them small skills
like computer lessons etc. We do not take up household work.
With the alarming
reports of old people being murdered for financial gain, the elderly who need
help are withdrawn, and they would rather suffer than let strangers into their
home. Amazingly volunteers have poured in, but we have been judicious in
selecting them. Regardless of status we
go in for police verification so that we safeguard the elderly and
assure them that this is done. We have trained about 40 volunteers, each ready to offer
help and many of them seniors
themselves.
Another important
aspect is that we are preparing a data base of home nursing facilities visiting
doctors etc. Udhavi is still in its infancy, but we plan to go ahead full
steam, and are planning seminars and workshops, and making life meaningful for
the old and the infirm, and none of them need to feel a low sense of worth, but need to squeeze
every drop of happiness that is legitimately theirs.
We might merely scratch
the surface, but even if we light up 10 lives for the year, it gives us a great
sense of fulfilment.
Sabita
Radhakrishna
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