This is what my 83 year old mother does with me and my two siblings. She lives by herself. She became concerned about falling or not being able to let someone know that she needed help, about 6-7 years ago.
So every morning she texts a Bit-moji of herself to a group text that the four of us have. If we haven’t heard from her by a certain time in the morning, one of us should reach out and ensure that’s she’s okay. There have been a 3-4 times over that last few years that she’s forgotten to post and one of us will reach out, before we send the calvary to check on her. Two of us live within an hour of her, and one of us lives across the country. She was always okay.
The side benefit is that my siblings and I are now closer later in life. We use the group text to keep each other abreas with what’s going on in our respective families, when we’re traveling, etc.
I think that even after our mother passes, we’ll keep the text chain going, just to keep up with each other.
You can get personal, wearable alarms that have fall detection. Not much good if you die in your bed, but otherwise they’ll send someone round. Here’s an example from Age UK (and old-age charity).
Sure - but it’s not that uncommon that people don’t. My husband had an acquaintance who died at home, alone, in late 2021. He wasn’t found for days, maybe a couple of weeks - my understanding is that it was the odor that caused someone to investigate. He didn’t have a job where he could work from home, so it’s not like anyone noticed he wasn’t submitting work. He apparently was not in contact with his only relative ( when the emergency contact was called , he denied even knowing my acquaintance) and he apparently didn’t have any actual friends - my husband and I knew him through bowling leagues , but in December 2021, lots of bowling leagues were not operating the way they normally did.
I don’t expect to die soon or simultaneously with my husband - but if my kids went a few days without hearing anything from one of us, they’d investigate.
There’s an apple watch app that tracks health, including tracking sleep patterns - it willindicate how much awake, sleep, and deep slepp I had each night. It also watches (sorry) for exercise, will ask if I want to record, for example, an outdoor walk. (Presumably the motion sensors)The apple watch will also measure pulse. Plus, it can monitor for falls.
I don’t imagine it is too difficult to write an app that does similar - check for a pulse every so often and for certain events (fall, lack of motion for a few minutes). It could allow for lack of motion while in bed (using GPS to know your typical sleep locations) but need a pulse, it could ignore lack of motion or pulse when on the charger, etc. or even allow for vacations - “OK, according to the GPS you are nowhere near home, so assume you are sleeping - with pulse - in a hotel”)
The downside is it still requires the awareness to charge the watch regularly (My new one can go maybe 2 days before a charge is urgently needed).
I guess the other question is - other than body collection, what is the urgency? “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” is a valid point, or Hackman who relied on his dead wife to take care of him, but generally - if you keel over with a heart attack, notifying someone who shows up within an hour or two is still likely too late.
(A fun fact I read once was that the process of waking up involves a shot of adrenalin to get you moving in the morning, and many people who “died in ther sleep” from heart failure likely actually died when their body tried to wake them and the adrenalin rush was too much. )
That really depends on what type of heart attack. I had a heart attack that probably started a couple of hours before I got to the hospital and I recovered fine - but it was caused by a blockage in a stent and waiting a couple of days for the angioplasty might not have ended so well.
Not to mention there are other injuries/diseases that don’t cause death immediately - I don’t know exactly what caused my MIL’s death. Maybe she had a stroke or maybe she just fell and hit her head but if a stroke doesn’t kill someone instantly, it might leave them unable to summon help and they might end up dying due to lack of water or food rather than directly due to the stroke.
Our town offers a number of services on request for people living alone. One is a daily telephone call:
Daily hello
The daily telephone service is aimed at seniors and people in vulnerable or isolated situations. It allows them to remain socialized, and to be monitored on a daily basis so action can be taken quickly in the event of an emergency.
I wonder if smart watches can detect when you die. Of course they would have to be able to distinguish between you dying vs you just taking the watch off.
But when your pulse, blood pressure, respiration, ekg and oxygenation all drop to 0, I’m wondering if the watch can send an alert that you’ve just died to someone.
Reading that article, I find it striking that postmortem investigation could be impeded by significant scavenging. Makes sense, but also tends to pale in comparison to the visceral* impact of our beloved fur babies literally consuming us.
My cat has the annoying habit (as I’m sure most do) of being underfoot when I’m walking around the house. Considering the state of my knees and possible balance issues this has led me to occasionally say, “Rascal, if I fall and break my neck you’ll have to live off the dry food in your feeder until you decide to start eating my corpse.” He does not seem to be particularly dismayed by this concept.
If you have pets you care about, it’s probably a good idea to have some process in place so that your body is discovered within a day or so of an unexpected passing.
Fine by me. But I might collapse outside, and some of the cats might be shut inside. And/or the dog might be shut in a crate. (He tends to eat the furniture, if I’m asleep or outdoors for too long. I don’t think it’s nervousness; I think he just really likes to eat some particular parts of the furniture.)
Yeah, I had one; but it’s fallen through due to health issues on the other end. I’ll have to figure out another one.
In all seriousness, tripping over pets is a very common source of life-altering falls in the elderly.
As some of the MDs have been quick to point out, apparently the beneficial social effects of owning a pet more than offset the added risk of fatal or crippling falls. But the fall issue negates a lot of the benefits.
Maybe a bright orange dayglo cat with bells would be safer than the silent one that blends in with your floor color.