Cause of Death: Old Age

[Davey Do]

I lost both my maternal grandparents around 1965 when I was about 8 years old. A grade school school chum asked, "What did they die of?" I answered, "Old age" and the etiology was a consensually acceptable one.

Both of my maternal grandparents had been in their mid 60's when they died.

 

I am going to be 64 years old tomorrow, Groundhog's Day.

 

 

 

Thank you.

Do you remember when dying of old age was an acceptable etiology; an acceptable reason for an individual's demise?

"About three-fourths of all deaths are among persons ages 65 and older. The majority of deaths are caused by chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. During the 20th century these chronic diseases replaced acute infections as the major causes of death."

https://www.CDC.gov/nchs/data/ahcd/agingtrends/06olderpersons.pdf

 “With advances in medicine and technology we can better and more accurately pinpoint causes of death in people, unlike many years ago when people died and doctors were unsure of the cause.”

https://www.thehealthy.com/healthcare/caregiving/what-dying-of-old-age-really-means/ 

 

Everybody has to die.  With a diagnosis.

 

 

I want that to be my cause of death.

Along with "Old Age".

[CommunityRNBSN, BSN, RN]

I’ve learned from working in an FQHC:

If a person dies at home and their family or visiting nurse finds them, somebody calls the funeral home, who takes them away for burial or cremation. Next, the death certificate is presented to the PCP to assign a cause of death! Even though they have no idea and haven’t seen the patient at the time of death or after. 

This has come up a few times recently. The provider said: “I am officially this person’s PCP, but I have had exactly one TeleHealth visit with him ever, I’ve never examined him, and I have no idea what he might have died of.”  I told her that we don’t actually even know that he’s dead!  (I mean, it was a funeral director who brought the death certificate to us, so I can assume he was, but for the sake of argument.) “Unknown” is not acceptable, and the state will return it to our office for clarification if we put that. Same with “old age.”  Our medical director told her to write “cardiac arrest.”  So... Yeah. I’m pretty horrified by these people being counted in statistics with random diagnoses because nobody actually knows how they died and yet the state won’t accept “unknown.” If it were suspicious, an autopsy would be done, but if they were elderly or in generally poor health... shrug. 

[Davey Do]

On 2/6/2021 at 9:51 PM, sevensonnets said:

I darn near died the other night when I found two raccoons on the back porch when I was taking the garbage out then slammed the storm door on my finger and cut it trying to get away.  I guess my cause of death would be cardiac arrest following vicious raccoon attack.

[Davey Do]

 

13 hours ago, CommunityRNBSN said:

“Unknown” is not acceptable, and the state will return it to our office for clarification if we put that. 

[sevensonnets]

Actually, it was my ring finger right above the cuticle and it was hideous. I could have died from that alone! And my raccoons were not as quite as cute as yours; They had fangs and four inch long claws.Not that I want to see them again but I am curious to know what a 20 lb bag of garbage did to their little raccoon heads.

[Davey Do]

12 minutes ago, sevensonnets said:

Actually, it was my ring finger right above the cuticle and it was hideous. 

 

Oh, the sensationalist crap they show on the news nowadays!