Atrial Fibrillation surprise

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wow bob - i'd have never guessed it was that long ago.

 

Do you mean 2020? I remember the announcement here on PC, which didn't exist in 2000.

My spouse is 7 years older than me, but the various branches of the family have numerous examples of wives with even greater seniority over their husbands.

 

Beware, modern medicine has thrown a big monkeywrench into those old genetic expectations, so don't bet too much on that.

E.g. all my stepdad's recent male ancestors keeled over from heart attacks before their 62nd birthdays, so he was expecting and even planning to be gone by his mid-60s. But modern medicine intervened, pulled him through his heart attack and several other serious conditions, and didn't let him go until complications of about five different conditions piled together early this year. He almost made it to 90, a solid quarter century more than he expected. If only he had taken better care of his health so that he could have been more mobile and able in his late years ...

Remember also that those life expectancies are just averages. The bell curve distributions are very wide, producing a lot more overlap than difference between the sexes.

... for men getting married at birth . Not many people do that. As age increases, the sex difference decreases somewhat.

U.S. life expectancies took a major hit during the Pandemic, with males getting shortened more than females. (I wonder why .) There are also significant race and ethnic differences.

Using the last pre-Pandemic tables (2019), males at birth could expect 5.1 years less than females. But by average marriage age of about 30, the gap fell to 4.5 years. For people (re)marrying late in life, the gap at 60 was just 3.0 years. For those reaching 100, the gap was just 4 months.

There are lots more patterns to explore here:
2019 tables: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr70/nvsr70-19.pdf
2021 tables: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr72/nvsr72-12.pdf

 

As we age through our 60's unfortunately we become more & more familiar with friends suffering not from heart ailments (for which there are many remedies nowadays) but sadly dementia. It's literally The Walking Dead - & how depressing is it when you visit your loved one & they don't know you from adam. Mom is now 90 & it's forseeably someday - on one of her healthy walks she may not recognize her own home & how to get back there.
A-fib suddenly appears the lesser of two evils. Very very few remedies in sight or on the horizon - & so my 'heart' goes out for those suffering - especially those as early as their mid-40s
.

 

sister in law was recently diagnosed with alzheimers in her late 50's. slow deterioration, good days and bad.

 

Sympathies to you!

I used to be blissfully uninformed as to the horrible nature of Alzheimer's until my own sweet MIL passed from that dreadful disease.