The Book about Getting Older (for People Who Don’’t Want to Talk about It)

The honest, compassionate and vital guide to getting older, from dementia to finances, medication to care homes

’The most important book about the second half of your life you’ll ever read. I wish everyone in the UK could be under Dr Lucy’s care’ SANDI TOKSVIG

’This warm and compassionate book gets to the heart of older age’ THE BRITISH GERIATRICS SOCIETY
________

Now more than ever, we need to talk about getting older.

Many of us are living to a very great age. But how do we give those we love, and eventually ourselves, long lives that are as happy and healthy as possible?

Dr Lucy’s book gives us answers to the questions we can voice - and those that we can’t. This essential guide will guide you through those important conversations around growing older, answering every question you might have, including:

- How do we start the conversation?
- How do we ask whether it’s worth taking seven different medicines?
- Is it normal to find you’re falling out of love with someone, as they disappear into dementia?
- Should Dad be driving, and if not, who can stop him?
- What are the secrets of the best care homes?
- When does fierce independence become bad behaviour?
- How do you navigate near-impossible discussions around resuscitation and intensity of treatments?
- And who decides what happens when we become ill?

Serious, funny, kind and knowledgeable, this readable book helps guide us through essential conversations about getting older that go straight to the heart of what matters most.

Lucy Pollock trained in medicine at Cambridge and at Bart’s Hospital, and worked as a junior doctor in East London before moving to Somerset, where since 2001 she has been a consultant specializing in the care of those who are frail and elderly.