http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031218/APN/312181159
This woman was alone for a WEEK. That is so sad.
Please, Dopers, if you know of an elderly person who lives alone…make a point of checking on them on a regular basis.
I work in forensics, and we see elderly dead forgotten people all the time. Sometimes they come in decomposed, because no one checked on them for weeks after they died.
I don’t like thinking about how lonely it must be to die alone like that.
My cats have been eyeing me hungrily . . . Little bastards, they are licking their chops.
(Why is “dying alone” so bad? I would much rather die alone than in a bright, crowded, noisy hospital)
“Fair condition” after having a stroke and being bitten by cats for a week? Wow.
I always thought that whole cat biting thing was cuz the cats were trying to get her to “wake” up, kinda like in that one scene in Batman Returns.
At the start of the semester a Professor in the Agronomy Lab died on a Thursday. They found him monday morning, after knocking down his door. What’s spooky is that he lived a 2 minute walk away form the school and no one went to check up on him.
i think the philly area has the worst found dead story. a guy here was found 3 years after he died when his house went at auction. he was found just steps away from the front door with mail piled up around and on him.
they determined the time of death by the postmarks on the mail.
anyone who lives alone should be checked on no matter what their age.
Wow those are shocking stories !
And good for you ivylass for that posting.
That’s a sad story. I find it very disturbing that her cats started to attack her and her dog! But thank goodness she was eventually found. Thanks for the good reminder!
There is an organization around here that has volunteers who either call/visit homebound elderly folks every day to make sure they’re all right - I know because I’ve been considering joining up as a volunteer. So, if nothing else, you may want to try to get elderly friends/family/neighbors involved with an organization like that where someone can keep checking on them.
Speaking of cats, my Baby weighs in at 26 pounds and when I’m sick, she will snuggle up to me and gently clean my fingers, occassionally gnawing at a fingernail. Hubby says she’s just checking to see if I’m dead yet. :eek:
Some years ago, I had an elderly neighbor who fell in her kitchen on a Wednesday morning and wasn’t found until Thursday evening, when her daughter came to see why she wasn’t answering the phone. She had broken her pelvis in the fall, and she died on the operating table Friday morning. It still eats at me to think that I walked past her house at least four times while she was lying on that floor, unable to reach the phone and too far away from the street to be heard when she called for help.
I live in a new neighborhood now, and an elderly woman lives alone across the street. We neighbors all do kind of keep an eye on her, and if I ever didn’t see her out in her yard or driveway on any given day, I’d go over to be sure she was all right. Nonetheless, she did fall in her own side yard last Easter, when all we close neighbors were out somewhere. She managed to crawl into the driveway where someone finally saw her, and she recovered fully after having a hip replacement.
I think I’ll go call my mom now.
It’s not dying alone that’s sad, Eve. It’s the possibility that you realized there was something really, really wrong with you, and if you could just get help, you could…