What Are We Going To Do With Dad?

 

What Are We Going To Do With Dad? Writing in Health Affairs, Geriatrician Jerald Winakur looks at the “vast inland sea of elders” that is building and wonders where the doctors will come from to care for them. Writing as the son of an eighty-six-year-old man with dementia, Winakur also details the nitty-gritty of caring for an increasingly debilitated parent. In both of his roles—loving son and highly skilled professional—he is hard pressed to alter a course that punishes his dad and tears at his family. Even as medical science extends life, the future seen through his eyes is fraught with clinical and moral quandaries.

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