My father went from driving a car and a reasonable quality of life, to dead in 3 months at 77 after a rapid spiral from Lewy Body Dementia. He lost all ambulation in a matter of weeks. Definitely has changed my perspective on long term planning.
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Yes, itās definitely unpredictable. We were planning my dadās funeral four years ago this month, and now he is thriving. We were planning for my mom to move into an assisted living facility when COVID hit. We thought she would live to 95, but she passed away at 82 when they discovered cancer after hernia surgery. She died three days after they told us she had cancer. Seemingly random. 
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Up to 1 in 4 (27 percent) adults in the United States have some type of disability. Graphic of the United States displaying figures of people with a disability and people with no disability.
Percentage of adults with functional disability types:
- 12.1 percent of U.S. adults have a mobility disability with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs.
- 12.8 percent of U.S. adults have a cognition disability with serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.
- 7.2 percent of U.S. adults have an independent living disability with difficulty doing errands alone.
- 6.1 percent of U.S. adults are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing.
- 4.8 percent of U.S. adults have a vision disability with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.
- 3.6 percent of U.S. adults have a self-care disability with difficulty dressing or bathing.
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I enjoy exercising and I eat a healthy diet. Our house is a split level so I am up and down the stairs multiple times a day. I skip the elevator at work in favor of the stairs. I hope to live a long life as long as I am healthy. My husband is older and not in the greatest health or shape. I worry about helping him if he had a stroke or heart attack or really, any health issue. He does need knee surgery but the hospital wonāt do it until he loses weight.
My parents and sibling are all deceased. I know there are genetic factors at play but I refuse to take an āoh wellā position. Regular exercise, healthy diet, medical screenings and care - Iām going to do whatever I can to not be a burden.
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I think a lot of us, and our parents, plan for while we are healthy and after we are gone ā but the time in between, not so much.
Certainly people think bad things will never happen to them, and for some of us lots of bad things have already happened so weāve been disabused of that notion. Itās also true that knowing you should lose weight, or eat better, or exercise more doesnāt always translate into action. Privelaged (economics, rural/urban, ill/healthy) people can make time for that, not everyone can.
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Hospitals and cemeteries are full of people who thought they were healthy. Until they werenāt
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It hard not to generalize from your own experience. I know that exercise and diet are important, but my father and his sister who were both super active, thin, ate lots of fruit and vegetables, had top tier medical care, both died in their early 70s of heart issues. Their sister, always plump and not active died at 93. As did my mother, also plump and not active. My father-in-law was biking across Kansas at 75, dead at 83. His wife is still alive at 92 and never did intentional exercise. I am the only one in three generations of a large extended family to have cancer. Premenopausal breast cancer with no risk factors except being tall and several preventative factors ā late menstruation, breast fed for a total of over 6 years. There are statistics that do mean something, and thereās a lot we donāt know and canāt control.
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Luck, Mediterranean diet, bodybuilding (from another thread), exercising vigorously, etc. From my experience, all flawed.
The facts are that 42% of the US is obese, 70% are overweight and (my bolding) according the CDC only 24% of adults age 18 and older who met the Physical Activity Guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity.
Is there an element of chance? Maybe, but itās a lot more complicated than just luck, if luck does actually exist.
Wow. āIf luck actually does existā???
I guess you feel all those people dying of cancer or someother horrific disease or in accidents or whatever somehow contributed to their own deaths. As if kids getting leukemia is somehow thir own fault ?..
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My grandpa smoked and died of a heart attack in his mid fifties. He was overweight and likely also had Type II diabetes at the end. His dad, my great grandpa, died in his late forties. Also a smoker and overweight. He suffered a stroke. My dad? Eighty-eight, which I consider old. Terrible diet, but some exercise. The biggest difference? He has never smoked.
Luck?
Not in this case.
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My father in law, an All American swimmer, marathon runner, vegetarian, churchgoer, loving husband, and happy guy, died at 61 from a brain tumor. He was the healthiest person Iāve ever known, his mom lived to 99, I canāt imagine what he could have done differently.
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My dad was skiing beautifully nearly every day at age 77 then had to stop due to dementia. Heās 82 now and doesnāt talk anymore. Heās able-bodied and navigates stairs fine. But he does unsafe things due to his confusion.
My mom is super healthy and doesnāt want to leave their house nor put my dad in care even though heās clearly not safe at home. Iām also worried about what happens when my mom is alone in their large multi-level house with a zillion stairs and no main floor bedroom/shower.
Itās not going to be easy to talk her into selling. I see things so differently. We plan to downsize to a much smaller 1-story before weāre even 50! We are quite tall and have seen how much even our healthy tall relatives have struggled with daily tasks as they age.
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Completely agree on smoking. My motherās parents were heavy smokers and both died before they were 60. Dad was 65; he died of complications of prostate cancer. He had smoked but had been a non smoker for over 30 years. Mom was 80 when she died - recently diagnosed with metastatic liver cancer but a massive heart attack. My sister died from an aortic aneurysm, the same type developing in my aorta, caused by a genetic issue. I do think what Iām doing will have a beneficial effect on my life. Yep, stuff happens. My life has had plenty of ups and downs. I havenāt lived a life of privilege. People donāt always ābeatā cancer. My aorta could suddenly explode. But at least I will have lived a life I wanted.
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There is certainly luckā¦ but your own habits (including eating and exercise) help determine which set of loaded dice, which stacked deck of cards, or which biased roulette wheel you play. I.e. whether you get the dice, cards, or wheel favorable or unfavorable to you.
The luck that you cannot control would be that of genetics, or birth into a situation where damage done in childhood and early adult life due to parental choices and circumstances has lasting effects.
Sometimes, actions or inactions during adolescence, when you may not know any better, have lasting effects as you get older.
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My neighbor was a firefighter, in great health. At 62, he was diagnosed with ALS. Even if he had lived in a single story house, he may well have needed to move. He and his wife found a condo that will serve him very well through the difficult changes ahead. I think that the key is to be flexible & to deal honestly with the necessity for changes as they arise.
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Smoke and environmental hazards are thought to be risk factors of ALS. Firefighters are exposed to smoke from fires that may include environmental hazards beyond generic smoke and flames (some things that catch fire release pretty nasty stuff as they burn).
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A lot of good responses. My Hās motto in life āHope for the best. Plan for the worst.ā Of course, planning for everything is my task, so he is a lucky guyā¦
Genetics, exercise, nutrition, environmentā¦ They all factor into the equation, but luck is also definitely involved. Who knows if that drunk driver wonāt slam into you as youāre driving to dinner, or the deer jumps out in front of your car. Maybe you survive, but you may very well be severely impacted forever. There are countless scenarios of just bad luck.
Doctors donāt know if all cancers are genetic, environmental, lifestyle, etc. So it seems that bit of luck is involved. Or maybe fate is the better word. A 6 year old with cancer and no family history just seems like fate.
Oneās outlook can definitely be shaped by oneās experiences. I will be forever haunted by my coworker. Mid 50s. Had a back ache. Went to the doctor who said pulled muscle. A few days later, not any better, so she went back. Had an MRI. She walked into her MRI and fell into a coma and died in one WEEK! It was cancer. I was on vacation. I had no idea she was even sick. I talked to her the previous week. She didnāt even mention her backache. Mid 50s, seemingly healthy. You just never know when your time will be up. And as hard as that is, itās still preferable to me & H than watching his parents their last 10 years.
You can make yourself crazy trying to do everything right, and still fate might get you. So my motto is to do what I can within certain limits. Iām not going to live in a way that makes me miserable just so I can make it an extra 5 years longer. Iām not in a race to keep my body alive longer than anyone else. That being said, all of the women on both sides of my family have lived to be in their 90s without doing anything special, so itās certainly possible that I will do the same.
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I agree! Iām not trying to keep my body alive for the maximum amount of time, especially since dementia runs in my family. There are also some things we inherit that have nothing to do with taking care of our bodiesāI have extremely lax ligaments, which means that I already had mild arthritis in my knees in my late 40s. When this happens, all you can do is be careful and take the best care of them that you can. Skiing or running is not going to happen for me, but Iām dedicated to walking, swimming, and the recumbent bike. ā ā ā ā happens. 
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I have observed IRL that people who have not dealt with the ārandom illnessā in a loved one have a bias towards assuming that someoneās poor lifestyle choices contributed to their illness-- or is keeping them in denial about how to treat their illness.
Early onset dementia- boy, I got a LOT of unwanted advice once that parent was diagnosed. A clinic in Mexico having āexceptionalā results with apricot pit therapy (no thank you). Doing crossword puzzles (yes, weāve all read the nun study. But there are astrophysicists and concert pianists and mathematicians who have plenty of intellectual stimulation in their lives who have early onset). āWas it from using aluminum pans? Did you guys use teflon coated frying pans? Have you tried yoga or seen a chiropractor?ā (apparently people have great difficulty understanding that once someone has lost the neurological ability to instruct the limbs to move, ābeing flexibleā takes on a different meaning.)
And even more maddening- people assume that those folks so afflicted are too dumb to get the right medical care. The calls with the name of some rando naturopath who claims to cure dementia-- again, no thanks, weāre enrolled in a clinical trial with the top researcher in the world. The snarky suggestion that somehow if āyouād caught it earlierā the accupuncturist who cured someoneās sinus condition might have helped. What exactly can you catch early when a middle aged, successful, happily employed in a challenging profession person goes from fully present to significantly impaired in a matter of months?
So I love all you guys who are running and eating right and going up stairs carrying laundry and judging friends and family members whose BMI is out of whack and who smoke too much. But truly- a little humility will help when someone close to you is diagnosed with something out of the blue. Or just keels over (like the funeral I was at last week. Literally keeled over. Gone from perfect health to dead with no warning).
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I am trying to increase my odds of living a longer, healthy life, but Iām not judging others.
FWIW- One of my siblings lived a very healthy and active life until he was diagnosed with ALS in his 40ās. Nothing like that in our family or any known environmental exposure. Iām very aware of ārandom illnessā.
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