Gettin' old

Okay. I am going to rant. It’s one of those times. A time to rant and a time to be quiet – it’s one of the former. It all has to do with belonging to the group of senior citizens, retired persons - oldies in other words.

Every so often it seems to me that aging is chiefly a matter of three annoying experiences: first are doctor’s appointments and keeping track of one’s medications, the second is having to plan with an eye on one’s energy level and finally, the necessity of making adaptations to mesh with one’s infirmities.
Doctor’s appointments start out in our youth with the yearly checkup at the gyni and gradually add the ophthalmologist for the occasional eye checkup and the primary care physician for the annual flu shot. Reach retirement age and one’s calendar begins to fill up with appointments. One becomes a regular at the ophthalmologist’s because one has slowly-developing cataracts. 

The onset of an atrial fibrillation means that a cardiologist is added

to the list. One finds out that one’s cholesterol is high, so one foregoes the favorite cheese and ice cream and prides oneself on a really healthy diet for 3 months, and what happens? The cholesterol level climbs. Infuriating! One’s recalcitrant liver insists on making too much of the stuff. Return home from yet another visit to a doctor’s office and remember to take one’s pills, arrayed in a plastic box with 7 compartments. Thank heaven for this little box, because I am disorganized and forgetful and would either forget them or take them twice; Alzheimer’s setting in? I who hate taking pills, who consider myself an alternative type, am faced with the necessity of standard medications, three of them. I do not like.


As if this were not enough, there is the osteopath for the bursitis and the vitamins and minerals to down with meals, but not with grapefruit juice, which reduces their effectiveness. Calcium should not be taken with grains, various vitamins should not be taken together. Blimey. One needs a computer to keep track of it all. It gets worse if one is taking homeopathic meds, for they should be swallowed 20 minutes before one eats. Try that if you have come home late for lunch and can hardly wait to tuck into your feed. Which should start with fruit, which should be eaten half an hour before other food. The inner scheduler rebels.

Having to plan one’s life with a constant thought for the fading energy level is a nuisance at best. Can I go to Lugano on Thursday and the glass factory on Friday? Of course not; I would drag through Friday. Can I plan multiple activities on the same day? Not any more, and a day off at some point during the week to recharge the old batteries is a must. The to-do list gets longer and longer with all the leftover tasks that did not get completed when I planned to do them. A number of Sundays become sloth-out days, or shall we be more positive and say tanking-up days?

Finally there are the adaptations to the decline in sharpness of

sight, hearing loss and shaky balance. Arriving somewhere away from home I invariably remember that I have forgotten my hearing aids yet again. 30 years of wearing glasses for reading and only twice in all those years have I forgotten them. Really! But very nearly the opposite proportion is true with the hearing aids. Crowded restaurants are a racket of background noise and small rooms without sound-absorbing materials but with an echo are venues of frustration, while the dentist wearing a mask and asking a question might as well be speaking Chinese; lip-reading is a must. Why do I nearly always forget the little gadgets for my ears? Hmmm? Are we back at suspicion of senility again?

That’s enough ranting, Karen. Now that it is over, I feel better, and I go into the usual appreciation mode. Gratitude that I have not had a heart attack, a stroke or cancer. I ride my e-bike and walk without cane or pain. I haven’t had to have a hip or knee replacement. I do not have high blood pressure or diabetes. I feel pretty good. I enjoy life. I have grandchildren and friends and interests.

Underlying all of the above is gratitude simply for being alive. Not to be taken for granted, as I reflect while I cut an obituary for a friend out of the newspaper. This gratitude has been very conscious for the last two weeks, for I am now two weeks older than my mother was when she died. A very strange feeling and one that makes every day precious.

I will still fulminate, because it is unhealthy not to do so. Who knows, maybe getting all that exasperation out in the open will contribute to longer life, more passionate life, even more deeply felt gratitude. Something to look forward to.