Susan's Blog

Thursday, July 15, 2010
A Bitter Pill
Since I've never blogged before, I feel that I must tell you that I am Susan Sanford. I work at the Elbow Lake (Thorson Memorial) Public Library in Elbow Lake, Minnesota. Ours is the only library in Grant County, population approx. 6,000. If you look at the outline of Minnesota, we are half way up and down and about 30 miles from the Dakota border, just about where the hump stretches out to the west and North and South Dakota and Minnesota meet. We are a farming community, surrounded by rich, rich land producing mostly corn, soy beans and wheat...

Last night I finished reading A Bitter Pill: How the Medical System Is Failing the Elderly by John Sloan, M.D. Having spent the last decade tending to the needs of two very elderly parents, one who died of Alzheimer's Disease a year and a half ago, and the other 95 and in a nursing home, I was interested in what this Canadian medical doctor had to say. He weaves some pretty technical medical/political issues into anecdotes of his patients and their families.

If I can briefly summarize, Dr. Sloan describes the current medical system as one of "prevention and rescue" that works fine for younger folks and people with single disease pathologies but fails miserably for the elderly or fragile people who either have multiple pathologies or whose highest priority is NOT being rescued but rather being comfortable physically and socially. He advocates strongly for home care (his practice is entirely done in his patients' homes), keeping patients out of nursing homes and hospitals, minimizing medication (one of the side-effects of many of the common medications prescribed for the elderly is low blood pressure, which becomes a serious threat when each additional medication lowers the blood pressure further), and striving to see the elderly as individual human beings with extremely varying desires and situations.

I found the book inspiring and supportive for me personally. It was quite well written, at times dense and a bit repetitive but peppered with humor. I would love if medical administration people and policy makers would read it.

Any comments or questions?