The last time you visited the emergency room of any hospital or an urgent care center, who made up most of the people waiting to be seen? From my limited experience, it’s usually children, parents and people under 50, but there are some older people sitting there, waiting to be seen.

However, we need to consider the number of people who are taken to the hospital emergency room via ambulance. Quite often, if a trip to the ER is necessary for an older person, it will involve an ambulance trip and thus why they often aren’t seen sitting in the ER or urgent care waiting rooms.

For most people, a trip to the ER or urgent care is generally only a temporary setback health-wise, but with older people, that trip can mean a major change to life in general.

A former co-worker of mine was as healthy as can be all his life. He had never been to the hospital, urgent care or emergency room, until one day when he had severe abdominal pains and couldn’t stand up. Tests revealed that he had an intestinal blockage that required surgery. During the surgery, the doctors discovered he had cancer. When he got home the from the hospital, his and his wife’s entire life changed due to the cancer.

A year and half ago, I ended up in the emergency room after over 4 hours of violent vomiting and dizziness so bad I couldn’t get up from the bathroom floor. Turns out my blood sugar and blood pressure had gone dangerously high causing on onset of severe vertigo. I came home after three days, but my life changed as a result of that visit to the ER.

“Research published last year in the Annals of Emergency Medicine underscores the risks. Six months after visiting the ER, seniors were 14 percent more likely to have acquired a disability — an inability to independently bathe, dress, climb down a flight of stairs, shop, manage finances or carry a package, for instance — than older adults of the same age, with a similar set of illnesses, who didn’t end up in the ER.”

“These older adults weren’t admitted to the hospital from the ER; they returned home after their visits, as do about two-thirds of seniors who go to ERs, nationally…”

“Research by Dr. Cynthia Brown, a professor and division director of gerontology, geriatrics and palliative care at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, confirms this vulnerability. In a 2016 report, she found sharp declines in older adults’ “life-space mobility” (the extent to which they get up and about and out of the house) after an emergency room visit, which lasted for at least a year without full recovery.”

“‘We know that when people have a decline of this sort, it’s associated with a lot of bad outcomes — a poorer quality of life, nursing home placement and mortality,’ Brown said.”

In additional to financial concerns, this is most likely why so many of us older people avoid, at all costs, making any trips to the emergency room, urgent care or hospital. They fear the changes they’ll be forced to make, changes that will impact their lives and quality of life. Some chalk it up to stubbornness, or old-fashioned ways, and that may be part of it, but underlying that stubbornness is the fear of losing the lifestyle they have and the beginning of their decline.

Family and friends need to understand this when dealing with older family members. They need to be understanding, compassionate and reassuring. You may be surprised just how much loving and compassionate care can help an older person recover from whatever sent them to the ER to begin with.