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Life expectancy in inches
Old 05-20-2020, 09:38 PM   #1
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Life expectancy in inches

A friend has congestive heart failure. He is 72 yr of age. We were discussing life and death issues when he pulled out a tape measure. He said what's the average life expectancy? I answered IDK maybe 80 yr? Then he pulled out 80 inches, put his finger on 72, and said this is my life if everything goes right. 8 inches, a small fraction of the 80 inches.

I told him after his recent heart stent 90% of patients were alive ten years later, but I did not tell him the average life span after a congestive heart failure diagnosis is 5 years.

Somehow seeing your life span on the tape measure made it all too real. Then I get home and google it and I found I was a bit generous in my assumption, its like 78 for a US male.

In my life my father died at 73, a smoker who beat lung cancer for 17 years, my mom is 96 and had a bout of colon cancer about 20 years ago. Im 65. I figure Ill at least hit he average, if not more, but then im not a perfect physical specimen either, lol. Regardless im buying a longer tape measure.
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Old 05-20-2020, 10:12 PM   #2
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It is a common misconception to think that average life expectancy at birth statistics apply to individuals throughout their life time. The actual average life expectancy for a 72-year-old male in the US is 85 years (2017 statistics). A female of the same age is 87 years. It turns out that the longer you live, the longer you live.

Social Security Actuarial Life Tables
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Old 05-20-2020, 10:26 PM   #3
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Yeah you already beat the car wrecks, the heart attacks, the liver cancer and the home invasions.
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Old 05-21-2020, 05:17 AM   #4
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I'm already at 115% of my average life expectancy in the year I was born, so I'm beating the odds by quite a bit.
Averages are only predictive for populations, not people.
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Old 05-21-2020, 05:24 AM   #5
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Life expectancy means nothing to me. It's all about health and quality-of-life expectancy. My parents both died in their 80's but had been miserable for years.
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Old 05-21-2020, 05:36 AM   #6
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Wow, fun to look up, at birth white male expectancy was 69 (I thought it would be higher than that - must have been banning lawn darts that got future years above 70). If I knew I was going to die in 23 years I'd have a fat fire with zero net worth at the end. Planning to beat 69 by a few years though....
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Old 05-21-2020, 05:53 AM   #7
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Regardless of the true life expectancy, I think the ultimate takeaway is that "It's Later Than You Think!"

To me, the wakeup call was when I started to notice that I was at a point in my life that I could remember things that didn't seem that long ago, but are far enough in the past that if we went that far into the future, I'll probably be dead. For instance, I'm 50 now. I can remember when I was 6 years old, my Mom and Dad taking me and my cousin Jimmy to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA. I can remember a lot of details, like wanting to go on the "big" roller coasters, but Dad didn't want to, and Mom didn't have the stomach for it, so Jimmy and I were relegated to their kiddie coaster. I had never seen a looping coaster before, and Busch Gardens didn't have one yet, but they did have this one big coaster (well big to a 6 year old) called the Glissade, that looked scary and exciting to me, because it was banked so steeply that it might have been close to sideways at the bottom. I also remember riding the little Red Baron airplanes that were next to the Glissade. And I can remember the log flume ride that had the fake rotary saw blade overhead just before the big final drop, that seemed so scary.

And all those memories don't seem so long ago, yet that's 44 years! Fast forward another 44, and if I'm still alive, I'll be 94.

Something else I just remembered, about that Busch Gardens trip. We got some laminated placemats, or something like that, that had a pic of that Glissade coaster on it. And, lo and behold, the internet has everything...here's that exact pic!
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Old 05-21-2020, 06:06 AM   #8
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Regardless of the true life expectancy, I think the ultimate takeaway is that "It's Later Than You Think!"

To me, the wakeup call was when I started to notice that I was at a point in my life that I could remember things that didn't seem that long ago, but are far enough in the past that if we went that far into the future, I'll probably be dead. For instance, I'm 50 now. I can remember when I was 6 years old, my Mom and Dad taking me and my cousin Jimmy to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA. I can remember a lot of details, like wanting to go on the "big" roller coasters, but Dad didn't want to, and Mom didn't have the stomach for it, so Jimmy and I were relegated to their kiddie coaster. I had never seen a looping coaster before, and Busch Gardens didn't have one yet, but they did have this one big coaster (well big to a 6 year old) called the Glissade, that looked scary and exciting to me, because it was banked so steeply that it might have been close to sideways at the bottom. I also remember riding the little Red Baron airplanes that were next to the Glissade. And I can remember the log flume ride that had the fake rotary saw blade overhead just before the big final drop, that seemed so scary.

And all those memories don't seem so long ago, yet that's 44 years! Fast forward another 44, and if I'm still alive, I'll be 94.

Something else I just remembered, about that Busch Gardens trip. We got some laminated placemats, or something like that, that had a pic of that Glissade coaster on it. And, lo and behold, the internet has everything...here's that exact pic!

That was my first coaster! I remember the first time I rode the Lock Ness Monster too! Only 4 years behind you.....
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Old 05-21-2020, 06:07 AM   #9
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Said this before, but then again I've said everything before: As I approached my 40th birthday in Riyadh I wrote to a, now long deceased, aunt and said that it seemed like 'yesterday' that I turned 20.

Furthermore, I noted, that in one more unnoticeable hop I'd be 60, and would have thus gone from 20 to 60 without even noticing that the time had disappeared.

Now...in less than 2 1/2 years, (if I make it), I'll be 80......yet, discounting the aches/pains, diminished physical ability, I really don't (insidemyheadwise) feel any different now than when I was 20.

Make the most of what time you have...it's fleeting.
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Old 05-21-2020, 06:32 AM   #10
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That was my first coaster! I remember the first time I rode the Lock Ness Monster too! Only 4 years behind you.....
We went back in 1979...my Mom, her boyfriend Tom, and me. Tom liked coasters, so he took me on them all. Got to ride the Loch Ness that year, which was the first looping coaster I was on. Oddly, I can still remember rumors going around among us kids at the time, that the Loch Ness had three loops...the two interlocking ones and a third somewhere. So, when I actually rode it, I was disappointed that there was no third.

And, I thought the Glissade was really cool, too. I liked the fact that it had no safety restraints whatsoever. You just sat in it toboggan style, like the log ride, and it made it seem more dangerous.

I remember a third coaster, called Die Wildkatze, that we were able to coax my Mom into going on. She wasn't crazy about it, but she survived! That coaster got replaced by the Big Bad Wolf in 1984, and then Verbolten opened in its place in 2012. Interestingly though, after all those years, there's one tree out in front of the queue line, that I swear has survived all three coasters. I found this old pic online a few years back, and you can see the tree trunk in the foreground...

I made it a point to pay attention, the last time I went to Busch Gardens, which was 2016, and I swear that same tree is still there! Unless they pulled the old tree out and put in one identical to it a long time ago, so it had time to grow large again. Sometimes little things like that remind me just how quickly life can pass. Here, roughly half of my life has now gone past, yet that tree is still there, little changed. Actually, that coaster still exists, too. It ultimately fell into the hands of a little Mom & Pop park that you can see from I-70 a few miles east of Frederick. I rode it one day back in 2010, for the nostalgia. It was a weird experience...on one hand they say you can never go home again, but damn it made me feel like a little kid again! Albeit, a 6'3" little kid who discovered he can now barely fit in that thing!
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Old 05-21-2020, 07:21 AM   #11
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My mother in-law said to me once when she turned 86. "I remember being a little girl just like it was last week." That comment has always stuck with me. She grew up in Lithuania during the Russian invasion and witnessed a lot of death and her family was able to escape.

My own mother turned 90 recently, and as I spoke to her on the phone (couldn't visit due to the virus) she actually said the same thing, almost word for word.
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Old 05-21-2020, 07:49 AM   #12
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Originally Posted by 6miths View Post
It is a common misconception to think that average life expectancy at birth statistics apply to individuals throughout their life time. The actual average life expectancy for a 72-year-old male in the US is 85 years (2017 statistics). A female of the same age is 87 years. It turns out that the longer you live, the longer you live.

Social Security Actuarial Life Tables
actually, the longer you live, the longer you are expected to live
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Old 05-21-2020, 11:56 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by Andre1969 View Post
Regardless of the true life expectancy, I think the ultimate takeaway is that "It's Later Than You Think!"

To me, the wakeup call ...

I can remember when I was 6 years old,

My wakeup call was actually my wife's health. She has always been healthier than me and still is overall other than for a heart defect we found out about a few years ago. Nothing she could have done as it has been there since birth, but something that is likely to shorten her life.

On remembering when you were 6 years old....I wasn't able to do that even when I was in college. Other than my dog dying I can't remember a single thing from my childhood.
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Old 05-21-2020, 12:18 PM   #14
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My DM lived with us before she passed at 93. She could remember details from her childhood as though they were yesterday. But could not remember if she took her pills 2 hours before. Makes me think the brain pushes fun memories forward to deal with getting older. She also spoke in her Czech language often, but I'm not sure who she was talking to. I don't speak the language. Interesting how little we know about the mind.
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Old 05-21-2020, 02:02 PM   #15
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My DM lived with us before she passed at 93. She could remember details from her childhood as though they were yesterday. But could not remember if she took her pills 2 hours before. Makes me think the brain pushes fun memories forward to deal with getting older. She also spoke in her Czech language often, but I'm not sure who she was talking to. I don't speak the language. Interesting how little we know about the mind.
In dementia (and cognitive decline in general), the short term memories tend to be the first to go. When my DM's dementia was at its worst, she could tell us stories of 70+ years earlier like they happened the day prior, but she didn't know where her bedroom was. I also noticed that both DM and DD "saw" relatives that had passed YEARS earlier and talked to them in a very lucid manner when they weren't really able to communicate with those that were still in the present.
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Old 05-21-2020, 03:04 PM   #16
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Being born in the UK in 1955 my life expectancy at birth was 74.2, now it is 83.6.
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Old 05-22-2020, 07:31 AM   #17
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Life expectancy means nothing to me. It's all about health and quality-of-life expectancy. My parents both died in their 80's but had been miserable for years.
My Dad lived to 95 but was only miserable after they lifted his drivers license at age 92.

I am totally ok with not driving. It would be a hit but our urban lifestyle makes it tolerable with public transit and Uber.
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Old 05-22-2020, 08:10 AM   #18
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My DM lived with us before she passed at 93. She could remember details from her childhood as though they were yesterday. But could not remember if she took her pills 2 hours before. Makes me think the brain pushes fun memories forward to deal with getting older. She also spoke in her Czech language often, but I'm not sure who she was talking to. I don't speak the language. Interesting how little we know about the mind.
My grandmother was like that, as well, toward the end. She couldn't remember what she did the day before, but in an attempt to exercise her memory a bit, I'd ask her where her family's farm was, when she was a little girl. Without batting an eye, she'd blurt out "Between Heidlersburg and York Springs" which are two towns in Pennsylvania, along Route 15 southwest of Harrisburg.

When she was a little girl, her parents were fairly well-to-do. Her father ran a construction company in Harrisburg. They owned a house in H-burg, that her father had built, along with several others along the street, and also had the farm out in the country. They also had a car and a truck. But then, in the Great Depression, they lost the farm. Also lost the car, but kept the truck, to help out with the business. Anyway, Grandmom was born in 1924. I'm not sure what year specifically they lost the farm, but she was probably less than 10. She made it to the year 2015 and age 91.

But, even at the ripe old age of 50, I'm noticing that many of my childhood memories come in loud and clear, like it just happened. But then I have to think long and hard about what I actually DID do yesterday!

For instance, I just thought about when my Dad took me to see "Smokey and the Bandit" in the theater. I would have been 7. I vaguely remember there was some Herbie the Love Bug movie out that I wanted to see, but Dad was like trust me, you'll like this. As a little kid, I had no idea "Smokey" was a slang term for "cop", so I was thinking the movie was something about Smokey the Bear, and didn't want to see it. I can also remember them letting us in the theater while it was still playing, so we caught maybe the last 10 minutes of it and then sat there until the next showing. For some reason I can remember distinctly the CB radio conversation "My hearing is just fine. The fact that you are a Sheriff is not germane to the conversation." "The GOD-D@MN GERMANS got nothing to do with it!!" As a kid I didn't understand it, but I remember the audience laughing, so I knew it was supposed to be funny.

I also remember Burt Reynolds saying "I only take off my hat for one thing", and thinking I KNOW WHAT IT IS!! But, my not-yet-corrupted 7 year old mind thought that it was to take a bath. It wasn't until a few years later, when I was a little bit older, that I caught on to what that meant.

I can also remember in those days when they let you out of the theater, the exit was different from the entrance, and went outside the mall. So, if you wanted to go back inside the mall, you had to walk back around and go through the main doors. I can also remember it being a warm, humid, summery day, where the sky is blue, but hazy and a bit chromey looking.

That was about 43 years ago. But, ask me what the last movie I saw in the theater was, and I'm drawing a total blank.

But, my memory's not perfect. For instance, my Dad took me to see Star Wars in the theater as well, and the only thing that really sticks out is that I got a bit shocked/surprised/upset when Obi Wan Kenobi gets it. That might have been the first time I saw an on-screen death...or at least the first time I was old enough to have it register with me, and understand what it meant.
Mom and Dad were divorced by that time, so I do remember going to see both Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit three times in the theater. Once with Dad, once with Mom, and once with Grandmom and Granddad.
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Old 06-12-2020, 07:54 PM   #19
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I will be 65 in two months. I told my wife that I have the body of a teenager. She told me to give it back because I getting all wrinkled.
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Old 06-13-2020, 06:09 AM   #20
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I can remember when I was 6 years old, my Mom and Dad taking me and my cousin Jimmy to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA.
Ha! You're a youngster. I can remember when Busch Gardens was just... gardens! The big draw was some kind of bird show. The birds did tricks. I think one of them talked. I was probably around the same age, maybe 6. So that was around 10 years before you got there, with your fancy roller coasters and all.
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