Unit 7 Living Old
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Unit 7: Living Old
Monalisa Obiagwu
Broward College
DEP2004
Professor Jillian Wojcik
July 23, 2023
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After watching the documentary "Living Old", I was surprised to see the different types
of struggles older people face by the time they reach adulthood. I have always heard of the
struggles of being elderly, but I have never seen it so up close as I did by watching the video.
Watching the elderly people in the video struggle to speak, eat, remember, talk, and move was
truly heartbreaking. The price of home care was also shocking to me; a patient in the video pays
$150,000 a year for 24-hour, all-round care. I hope that when I get into my late adulthood, I want
to have my family members care for me. I don’t know what I would do if I had no one; I cannot
even begin to imagine. Elderly people do not have it easy; it is scary, and I would love to
postpone this last stage of adulthood as much as possible.
What I found most meaningful in this video was how much doctors, nurses, and
caretakers care for older people. A primary care provider for elderly people is a geriatrician,
someone who specializes in treating the complex medical needs aging requires (Eure, 2020). I
enjoyed how the doctors would make home visits and communicate with their patients; it truly
shows how much they truly care. In one of the scenes, a doctor made a home visit to a patient
who is in a wheelchair and has lost their hearing. To communicate with the patient, the doctor
wrote down what he wanted to tell the patient, and the patient would read it and respond to the
doctor. This scene was heartwarming.
Honestly, my view on growing old has not changed much; I fear the unknown. As much
as the video shows how caring the geriatric doctors were, there are just not enough people in that
field. The American Medical Directors Association, which credentials physicians in long-term
care, has certified only 1,900 such doctors in the entire country; only 2 percent of physicians in
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training say they want to go into geriatric care (Winakur, 2005). As a future elderly person, I
want to receive the best care possible from people who specialize in caring for my age group.
The challenges that come with being elderly are entirely too much, and it makes it no better that
genetics play a role in our health. When it comes to being taken care of as an elderly person, I do
not want to feel like a burden to those who care for me. I hope I can adjust from being
independent to having to depend on others. As for the elderly people that are currently in my life,
I am going to make as many memories and listen to as many stories as I can before they are
gone. There are many unknowns during late adulthood; anything can happen at any given time.
The last psychosocial stage of Erikson's theory is integrity vs. despair, which is a stage in
which one finds meaning in one's life and accepts their accomplishments without regrets (Lally
& Valentine-French, 2017). There were some people in the video who had integrity and were
content with the lives they had lived, while others never expected to live as long as they did. A
99-year-old woman named Clara Singer, when asked how long she would like to live, said, "I
never thought of it; I like life." The way she said it, it seemed like she had achieved a lot and was
happy with the life she lives. While others struggled with feelings of despair, and I could sense it
by the way they would talk.
The readings and videos this week allowed me to fully understand what it means to be in
late adulthood. In the video, some of the patients had either their wives or daughters taking care
of them by helping them with movement, eating, and taking their medication. Most importantly, I
want to be there for my elderly relatives during their last moments, so they are not lonely. In the
readings, it pretty much talks about how important relationships are with friends and family.
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