Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life

Geriatrician Louise Aronson introduces the reader to complexities not only in our medical system but in our cultural vision of aging. As the population continues to increase in years, physical and mental difficulties unique to this subset prevail. Unfortunately, these aging complications are offhandedly and routinely treated as those that would be prescribed for more youthful patients, without considering the effects produced on the quality of life of these more frail and delicate elderly subjects. Not only does the medical care system ignore the special needs of older patients during this neglected senescent period of life, but aged persons who appear slow, incapacitated, and needy due to the insults of advancing years are often disregarded by the medical community and patronized by its members. Lucky are those seniors with the good fortune to have loving family members to act as their forceful advocates. The field of geriatrics itself is an overlooked area within the medical institution, often disregarded within the curriculum, spurned by medical students seeking better paying and ‘sexier’ specialties. Each of the fourteen chapters follows the course of life, beginning with birth, then growing into childhood, developing to adulthood, and finally descending to elderhood and the finality of death. This timely and important publication scrutinizes the problems with our medical care system. It also serves as a memoir for this medical writer, but mostly tells the myriad stories of our elder population and how we are failing this group of people who once were vitally young.