Category: aging

We Know What We Lost

Although climate change will affect younger generations more in the future, I believe its greatest toll now is on the oldest generations. We’re the ones who remember when the weather was more stable, and destructive droughts or floods were rare events; when summer temperatures rarely reached the 90s; when lakes and rivers were full or weren’t smothered in algae; when beaches weren’t closed because of fish kills or toxicity; when Western skies were blue rather than brown or white.

In my lifetime I’ve seen many changes in the natural environment. When I first started visiting Rocky Mountain National Park some 50 years ago, one of my favorite trails passed several ponds surrounded by tall green sedges. Today, most of those ponds have dried up, and the fish and salamanders that lived in them are gone.

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DIY Medicine

Growing up, even into my 20s and 30s, I remember that seeing a doctor was a relatively simple procedure. You would call his (doctors were still mostly male then) office, and a pleasant woman, known as a receptionist, would sign you up for an appointment. The doctor might spend a good hour with you, listening to your heart, tapping your knee (an obscure practice that seems to have gone out of favor) and listening to your complaints.

Many of us might still carry the memory of the 1960s medical TV shows, like Dr. Kildare, the compassionate and knowledgeable doctor who always had time for his patients. But that’s not the way medicine works anymore. I still believe most doctors are compassionate and knowledgeable. But the infrastructure around them has changed. Instead of talking to a reliable and caring receptionist, we get a phone tree that must be navigated in a sometimes futile effort to connect with our doctors.

I recently had the opportunity to wander into this maze of health care. Only persistence helped me find my way out. After I directly received the results of an MRI from the lab technician, and thus were not massaged by the doctor into something more reassuring or user friendly, I Googled the medical phrase and came up with a scary assessment.

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Traveling While Old

In my 20s, a friend and I took a road trip from Colorado to the West Coast in my VW Bug. We made no plans and only had a vague route—check out some national parks like Mount Rainier and Glacier. With our tent, sleeping bags and Coleman stove, we planned to camp along the way.

In those days before campgrounds fill up quickly and reservations are necessary, I didn’t make elaborate preparations. I didn’t yet know all the things that could go wrong: failing brakes (and mechanics who thought they could pull a fast one), my dog rolling in a dead fish at Lake Teton, a night on the beach so cold we wrapped ourselves in newspapers, and eating cold canned beans because we had no fuel for our Coleman stove.

Now, 50 years later, I’ve experienced many more misfortunes while traveling. After the last two trips to Great Britain resulted in flat tires from driving on the country’s narrow roads, I decided to drive as little as possible on a trip to Scotland two years ago, instead relying on trains, buses and ferries. Because my memory is not so great and because I wanted to control the trip as much as possible—I’m too old to be hitchhiking or looking for a place to stay at night—I planned every detail: reserved B&Bs along the way, bought tickets for the train and ferry before we left home, and even figured out the routes from the train station to our B&Bs. What could possibly go wrong?

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