Let’s talk about our ailments—please

Increasingly, when I get together with friends, the first thing we talk about is our ailing bodies, comparing notes: what did you do for your spinal problems?  How fast did you recover from your knee replacement? Anyone have cures for arthritis?

I recently had an MRI that showed I had “significant degeneration” in one of my spinal disks. Before I got to see the spinal doctor, I imagined all kind of bad outcomes. I had a lot of questions for the doctor, but the physician’s assistant I saw could tell me nothing about my long-term prognosis. Instead he listed all the options for relieving the pain, most of which involved using their clinic for increasingly expensive treatments, even though the pain is negligible for now. Luckily, I have friends and acquaintances who have had similar back issues, so I got more suggestions and reassurance from them: the massage therapy that worked, the steroids that temporarily eased the pain, and the surgery that mostly fixed the problem.

Almost every female friend has some form of bone-density loss. When I tried to decide if I should get on a popular drug that has some serious side effects, I found one person doing well on Fosamax, the recommended treatment for osteoporosis, while others had allergic reactions and have now tried something else. For now, I’m staying away from the drug.

Almost everyone I know has knee or hip replacements or both. They trade war stories about their operations and how long it took to heal, walk and drive again; and the best pain management. Some even share walkers, so they don’t have to buy or rent one.  

I get much more useful information from friends than from doctors who often tote the party line: take this medication and you’ll be fine; or this operation will fix the problem. What I hear from friends is that it’s more complicated, and outcomes can vary.

Over conversations, I also find out about new or alternative treatments. One friend told me tai chi kept her body balanced; another said stretching can overcome the downward effects of aging. For my arthritis pain, I got two good suggestions: decrease sugar consumption and take glucosamine. Based on another friend’s recommendation, I found an alternative healer who counsels that stress makes our ailments worse, so his therapy is to relax my body.

Not every new therapy works, but I’ve gotten more options than my doctors have given me and gained a bigger picture of my body. From this more holistic perspective, I can see how all the parts of my body—from my fingers to my brain—work together and affect each other.

Beyond the medical advice, I’ve often got good recommendations for doctors, massage therapists and acupuncturists.

Some people (younger people?) would say that all that time yapping about our medical conditions is self-indulgent and boring—an indication of our aging brains as much as our aging bodies. Aren’t there better things to talk about—politics, the state of our country, climate change or even the newest restaurant in town or our favorite TV show? And there’s a thin line between complaining too much and acquiring the information we need.

But the more we share stories about our tendonitis or bursitis, the more we help each other.  At our age, we’re all struggling to maintain our health. We know that none of us are going to regain our flexible, strong and pain-free bodies again. But we can boost each other, like combatants in a battle, to survive as best we can. We’ve all got war stories. Don’t keep them to yourself.

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What’s Lurking in the Basement

I have two neighbors, on the next block, who are obvious hoarders. Although a few houses apart, both have two or three cars parked in front of their houses and in the driveway that are jammed to the roof with their belongings. One house has a partially opened garage from which things are so tightly packed that some of them are leaking out. More of their possessions fill the front porch.

I don’t know these people, although I have seen an older woman out front occasionally, so I don’t know if these two overloaded houses belong to older people. But I do know it’s hard to get rid of your belongings as you get older.

I recently had visitors staying at my home, and I was dismayed to find that all my cabinets were too full to hide the bottles (of cleaning fluids, shampoos, etc.) that had been sitting on the floor. I don’t think of myself as a hoarder (and possibly my neighbors don’t either), but I can see that stuff accumulates without any visible effort on my part. And that if you don’t actively work to remove it, it stacks up into even bigger piles.

Continue reading “What’s Lurking in the Basement” →
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Still Rockin’ Out

I don’t often go to concerts anymore. Too loud, and I don’t like crowds. But one of my favorite singers—Mary Chapin Carpenter—was performing at one of my favorite venues—Chautauqua Hall, built in the 1898 and totally constructed of wood. It’s an intimate space with fantastic acoustics that sits above Boulder with great views in any direction.

At age 67, Carpenter can still rock, especially with her five-piece band, consisting mainly of people in their 60s (to my eyes). It was good to see older people on stage, aged to perfection after performing for 30-40 years, and having fun doing it.

The audience was similarly older. Around me were gray-haired men (a few balding) and women, some wearing hearing aids. That didn’t stop any of us from rocking out with Carpenter and her band: heads swaying in time to the music, some gentle foot stomping and singing. During the encore, we got even more rowdy—loudly clapping in time to the music and dancing, even if it was just swaying back and forth.

If there were young people watching, I could imagine their reaction to this sight: old people making fools of themselves, pretending they were still young, forgetting they had arthritis and needed hearing aids.

But what younger people don’t know (and what they’ll eventually find out) is that none of us sees ourselves as old. In the confines of our home or car, we’re still screaming to the Beatles, dancing to Bruce Springsteen and singing along with Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”

Even when I get older, I imagine listening to the Beatles and feeling the same joy I did when I was 13 and first heard them sing “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Maybe I’ll even remember the words and sing along. They say that hearing is the last sense to go, so music is one of our last pleasures when we can no longer functionally move or talk. We’re not aging fools; we’re just enjoying life, even if our bodies betray us. We’ll keep dancing and singing as long as we can. I know I will.

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