I’ve been thinking a lot more about the coronavirus this week, as a result of reading an unsettling article in the New York Times (July 31, 2020) about voluntary refusal of medical treatment by older adults who contract the virus. I’m of two minds.
First, at 76, I am vigorous and busy even in this time of sheltering in California. I was sick with a cold, the flu, or even perhaps the virus upon return from a trip to India in January. Since then I have been healthy and, aside from the common complaints of my contemporaries: sun damage from a youth spent lying on a beach towel in full sun for hours on end, arthritis that renders my thumb pads intermittently painful, and eyes that can see less and less clearly, I’m fine. I have periodic anxiety over our collective future, but no more than anyone I talk with these days. So, if I haven’t had the virus, and I get it, I think I would survive. I’ve survived cancer so why not?
But then, I think of the truly rich and varied experiences I’ve had, the privileged education, three wonderful husbands (wonderful in their own individual ways), and both paid and volunteer work that have enriched my understanding of the world and the people who have been my colleagues. I don’t want to die before my time, but when I think of my 56 year old daughter, for instance, I would gladly give up my place in an emergency line to her, a healthcare executive and the mother of my beloved grandson.
Some of us do our best and most exciting work in our older years. We’re more flexible and adaptable, more open-hearted, according to research. For my part, I don’t think I’m going to write the Great American Novel, although I would like to write a positive chapter or book about aging. One friend is working to bring into flower a world where we waste less food. Another, still the CEO of a flourishing company that aids governments and non-profits in evaluating their programs, has no plan to stop doing what she is doing. We have serious interests and commitments. Should we give up our satisfying present and our future for someone who presumably has a longer future? I think it really is an individual decision.
The virus has taken more of us than our younger children and grandchildren. It has taken too many Black and Latinx brothers and sisters. According to Dr. Louise Aronson, geriatrician at UCSF, the death rate starts to go up in people in their 50s and worsens as they age to their 80s and beyond. Most of those who have died have had no choice about whether or how they were treated.
The discussion about what choices they will have if they get the virus is so lively among healthy older people that an organization called Save Other Souls has created a document, vetted by lawyers, that allows people of any age to cede medical treatment to others during an emergency like Covid-19. The document becomes null and void after the emergency ends or 18 months after signing.
If the virus comes rampaging back to the San Francisco Bay Area, and I’m its victim, I would leave my husband, 9 years my senior, my three daughters, and my three step-children (all now middle-aged or soon to be middle-aged adults). Besides my husband, these adults are not finished with childrearing, accomplishing more in their careers, and in a few cases, finding their mates. So while my decision-making is only theoretical now, and may remain that way, I think I would step aside in their favor, given the choice. That’s where I am now.
