Madam, - We are told that elderly people take up beds in hospitals often because they do not have a suitable living-situation to which to return.
A significant number of people over 75 ask the question: "Why, when I collapsed or had my accident, did they not allow me to die?" Instead the medics supplied oxygen, drips, tubes, etc to bring back to life an elderly person who was on the brink of natural death and was ready for that eventuality.
Is delaying the inevitability of death seen as a triumph, perhaps, for modern medicine and surgery? Are increasing advances in life-support always for the benefit of the aged? We should consider that many are jerked back into a life which may already be of very poor quality. Why not allow them slip away naturally with the palliative care that will best support them towards doing that? Younger people (including medics) must remember that quite often older people see death as a friend.
- Yours, etc,
ANGELA MACNAMARA, Kilmacud Road, Dublin 14.