Traveling While Aging

When I was young, I took a trip with my sister where we took advantage of the Eurail pass, never knowing where we would end up, not quite sure what country we were in. Perhaps our innocence saved us, but as I’ve gotten older and discovered the inconvenient things that can happen, I’ve tried to make more definitive plans ahead of time.

In my 50s, a friend and I selected the towns we wanted to visit in England and rented a car, but we still had to drive on the wrong side of the road and search every day for lodging. I remember banging on the doors of B&Bs to see if they had any available rooms and whether a bathroom was ensuite or if we had to share with other guests.

When I turned 70, I decided I needed to plan every detail and not rely on chance. On a trip to the U.K., I reserved seats on the train, and a room in the hotel and car rental in the town where we would catch the ferry.  So what could go wrong? The train broke down, and we had to find an alternative way to get to the ferry town but didn’t make it in time. In an unfamiliar town, we dragged our suitcases in the rain, looking for a hotel room. I won’t tell you what else went wrong on this trip, but suffice it to say that it taxed my physical and cognitive skills. It felt like I was being taught a lesson: there’s no guarantee that everything will go as planned. In fact, the more you plan, it almost seems destined to fail.

When I was younger, I could handle these challenges, but as my memory has gotten worse and my legs weaker, travel has gotten harder. So for my most recent trip, one to Europe, I jumped on the idea of a river cruise, where they would make all the arrangements, provide three meals and one excursion a day, and I wouldn’t have to look for a place to stay every night.

I imagined a slowly, leisurely pace and time to just watch the world go by. But that’s not how it worked out. To make the 8:30 a.m. excursions to different towns, my friend and I had to get up at 6:30 for breakfast at 7:30. This was made more difficult by three-course dinners at 7 that didn’t end until 8:30. For people in their 70s, this felt like burning the candles at both ends.

The excursions through medieval towns were led by young local guides who either had a schedule to make or wanted to get the tour over with. The pace was fast, the information fascinating but unrelenting. By the time the tours were done, there was little time to sit in the café and enjoy a croissant or to shop for postcards or souvenirs before we had to jump back on the bus or ship and head for the next town.

But even when we were left to our own devices, there were still challenges. My sense of direction has never been great, but it’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. In Amsterdam, Google Maps wasn’t much help when we got lost, telling us to go west when we had no idea which direction we were facing.  Asking locals wasn’t much help: “turn right on Leidsegracht and left on Keizersgracht” was hard to understand, let alone remember by the time we got to Keizergracht.  When we finally found our hotel, after wandering the streets and getting soaked, we were exhausted.  

And then there’s the airports to navigate. Airports have gotten faster—or I’ve gotten slower. If you can’t keep up, you get run over. In the Dublin airport, I did something I never thought I’d do: enlist an airport cart to take me to a distant concourse because I was limping from a sore leg and wasn’t sure I could make the gate on time.

I’m not sure what the solution is. I’m not ready to give up traveling and I’m not ready to join a huge cruise ship. I no longer have the courage to drive on the narrow and bewildering streets of medieval villages. That means I need to become more familiar with the abilities of cell phones, like how to utilize Uber in a strange city or how to call a taxi when it’s raining or I’m tired. The young couple (late 30s) who accompanied us one day in Strasbourg helped us find two bookstores with a few clicks of their cell phones. If not for them, we’d still be there, staring at our screens.

I was determined to take this trip to Europe because I worried that I was running out of time to see new places. Many friends in their 80s tell me they have no interest in traveling anymore. Maybe it’s time to relax on a on a beach with a good book. Or take a long road trip through the U.S. where I get up when I want, eat when I want, and spend as long as I want admiring the bears in Yellowstone or the redwoods in California.

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My Life With Doctors

When I complain about not having any time in my life, my younger sister (just turned 60) asks  why I’m so busy all the time. Just wait, I want to tell her. It seems that after 70, my body started to slowly come apart. First it was pain in my knees when I walked down the stairs, and then discs started separating in my spine, my fingers became too stiff to curl, the bones in my arms and legs weakened, and other medical problems too embarrassing to mention. The latest was a severely blocked artery that required a stent to keep my artery open so I won’t have a heart attack. Before this, I didn’t know that you could get a catheter through a small vein in the arm all the way to the heart, even drilling through the plaque. Amazing.

In the past year I’ve gotten an education about the medical world. For example, there are more specialists than generalists, and it can take three to six months to see a specialist. I have appointments with two rheumatologists, hoping I can see one before October. Somehow, I’ve acquired three neurologists (for different conditions), one dermatologist, one cardiologist, a pulmonologist, a rheumatologist, an optometrist and ophthalmologist, a gastroenterologist, endocrinologist, orthopedist, a wound care specialist and a primary care provider. I’m sure I’ll add to this list as I get older.

Each visit has engendered more visits and more work. My deteriorating body requires therapy—not to put it back together—but to keep it from getting worse. My chiropractor, spinal therapist and hand therapist have all given me exercises to do at home, which take up a good part of the evening. When I’m not exercising or visiting my health care providers, I’m replying to their constant texts, phone calls and emails wanting me to confirm the appointment. And the forms that need to be filled out: Do I have covid? Have I traveled in the last month? Did anyone in my family have cancer?  

I need to list all my medications and there’s a lot. My bathroom counter is spread with bottles of medicine, and I need to remember which ones I take in the morning, which in the afternoon and which at night. It’s a good practice for my memory, which is getting worse, by the way.

Because my doctors can’t figure out why my hands hurt, I’ve enlisted the help of alternative healers, including a naturopathic physician, an acupuncturist, a somatic healer and a rolfer. At this point, my poor memory can’t keep up with all the healers, the doctors and their assistants—and even why I’m seeing them. My calendar is stacked with so many appointments that I don’t have time to see friends.

It’s all gotten so complicated, tedious and time wasting that I sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. I know two people who have refused to go to doctors for most of their lives. Now in their 70s and 80s, they have no idea if something is seriously wrong with them. It’s entirely likely that sometime in the near future they will be struck with cancer or a stroke, and it will be too late to save them. But in some ways I envy them. We could keel over at the same time, but they would have avoided all the endless appointments and the constant anxiety of not knowing if their condition is serious or not. Best of all, by dodging all the medical appointments, they had more time—the one thing I want more than anything.    

In the meantime, I’m getting a crash course in how the body works, and in the process I’ve developed an appreciation for its complexity. Because my doctors can only give me a limited amount of time (and because my science education by nuns was rudimentary to nonexistent), I rely on Google to explain how the heart sends blood all over the body through an intricate system; and how the spinal cord stacks up with discs that can deteriorate over time, leaving your vertebrae vulnerable.  I’ve learned some medical language that I can throw around casually: my neuropathy might be idiopathic; my heart test is ambulatory.

These are things we learn as we age, and I would have been glad to have never discovered them. I was blissfully happy as a young person never suspecting that my body would betray me, especially since I treated it so well: hiked and bicycled, took yoga classes, ate the right foods, never smoked, drank moderately and kept my weight down. Now I’m wondering: Why did I bother? Should I have just indulged in large scoops of ice cream?

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Words I Didn’t Know Yesterday

Every day it seems I stumble upon a new word or phrase I’ve never heard of, like this one from a Dear Amy advice column: “I don’t want to recreationally hurt his feelings by telling him I’m not comfortable with him anymore. . .” Is she hurting his feelings on the pickleball court?  Hard to know. (Not only do I learn new words from Amy’s column, but I also learn about new social trends, like brides wanting everyone at the wedding to wear the same color. It’s a new world out there.)

Along with the world changing too fast—social media, polarized politics, a warming planet, increasing prices in food and gas, TV shows that don’t make sense to a 74-year-old, and new trends in weddings–is language, pushed by social media where everyday speech must be evolving at a dizzying pace.  I say “must” because I don’t follow most social media. I’m not on Snapchat or X. I assume the words and phrases I find in my daily New York Times or New Yorker originate on these platforms or somewhere equally obscure to me.

As someone who spent most of her life devoted to language—writing, editing and reading—I feel overwhelmed by all the new words and phrases but also intrigued. I learn about our changing world through new language; I discover what people are concerned or obsessed about. I love doomscrolling, because it so perfectly describes our obsession with reading bad news.

I thought quiet quitting referred to leaving a job without officially resigning, like not showing up for work one day. But I’ve since found out it means doing the minimum amount of work. I can sympathize with workers who feel estranged from their corporate employers that don’t care or respect them. And we’ve all been ghosted, even if we didn’t have the name for being dropped unknowingly from relationships.  

The first time someone sent me an LOL, I thought the person was sending lots of love, which was a little strange from a person I didn’t know well. Still, I was pleased that she liked me.  I probably sent a whole lot of love to acquaintances before I figured that one out, but I’m sure the world has since moved on with a whole new repertoire of words that I will use wrongly and make a fool of myself.  I have to pause and think when a form asks if I’m BIPOC or Cisgender or which pronouns I want.

What if I choose wrongly?  Could I accidentally identify myself as a cat-hating, pro-Estonian witch worshipper and then get doxed? Have my address made public, so cat lovers show up at my house and pelt it with cat poop? Or sneak my picture on Facebook wearing a witch’s hat? It’s so easy in this world now to accidentally post something offensive and provoke someone or a group that exposes—doxes—you in social media.  

Language has always been touchy. I remember, in the 1970s, a heated argument at the liberal newspaper where I worked about whether Black should be capitalized or not. In the following years black and African-American were generally accepted. But now language is speeding along at the rate of a new meme daily. It’s taken me a long time to comprehend that word. When a friend who doesn’t own a computer asked me to define meme, I could only give him a few examples that may or may not have been accurate.

But I felt like I was reading a foreign language when I read a recent article in the New York Times about an influencer (that’s a whole other topic):

At her first full-time job since leaving influencing, the erstwhile smoothie-bowl virtuoso . . .

Although I have no idea what a smoothie-bowl virtuoso is, I find it intriguing that the writer combined the archaic erstwhile (from the 1500s—I looked it up) with a modern (I assume) phrase, although, as far as I know, smoothie bowl might be equally archaic.

Should I try to learn these new phrases, or will they pass as quickly as the next meme?

. . . wellness culture, a warm-blooded mood board of Outdoor Voices workout sets, coconut oil and headstands.

Others dismissed the workshops as out of touch, even appropriative.

Even though I found a definition for mood board (a collage of various items, as scenic snapshots, song lyrics, and mementos, used to evoke a desired feeling, style, or ambience for a project or event, and often fashioned as a starting point from which to create an inspiration board), I don’t know what the Outdoor Voices are saying. I guess I’m just another victim of an aging brain.

And I can guess what “appropriative” refers to, but not to a phrase used in another article: adaptogenic latte, although I have to wonder if I accidentally drank one.

Others I admire, like the puff of ashwagandha:

Still, her post count never slipped. So it was a shock to her fans and haters alike when, in a puff of ashwagandha, she disappeared from posting in 2019.

And did she ever come back, perhaps in a puff of Reishi mushrooms?

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