What the remaining years contain

Hector Villanueva had the conversation about what mattered to him on an ordinary Tuesday, eleven months before anybody needed the answer.

Nothing here is about extending life. All of it is about what the remaining years contain, which is a different question and is asked out loud.

Eleven medicines, seven of them intended

Fear of falling causes more loss of function than most falls do. People stop moving, decondition, and then fall.

Having it in a crisis means having it with the wrong people at the wrong hour. We book it in advance now.

Dr. Sofia Renard, geriatric medicine

Discharge, and the fortnight after

Strength training in the eighties works. It is prescribed rarely, described cautiously, and generally offered later than it should be.

“It was a much easier conversation than I expected,” he says, “because nothing was happening.”