The Busy Business of Old Age

Being old is a full time job. It takes up a huge amount of head space, time bargaining, spoon counting, and energy. Add to that mobility issues and transit challenges and inflation and you have quite a storm.

(1) have a large quantity of pills in my day. I have them delivered. But nothing is automatic. I do a weekly pill sort every Sunday into these compartmentalized gizmos. And phone my doctor when getting low. He faxes (you read that right) my requirements to the pharmacy. But every single time, they forget, he forgets, one of the pills, so I have to phone the pharmacy and ascertain the status of the missing pills. My specialists don't/can't access my list of medications but proceed to tweak some but neglect to tell my GP. I have to then go to my GP and show him the *manual* changes the specialist has made to these meds. GP is informed by LETTER a week or so later of the changes. My province's health care system's data base is 30 years old and even though every year they budget some millions for updating it, it never happens. So digital management of my medical needs is absent. I should NOT have to run around organizing my own medications. Everything should be on line - the pharmacy, the specialists, my GP, me, all interacting on the ether.

(2) My GP is leaving to move to Nova Scotia as his spouse works there. I am seriously heartbroken. Our health care system here is in crisis and finding another GP is a huge challenge as there's an unconscionable shortfall in doctors. My existing GP is trying to find me a doctor due to the ongoing management (weekly) of my health issues. He's an incredibly involved compassionate and caring doctor and one of the best I have ever had. But he leaves in November. 

(3)I have fairly decent days and fairly awful days of pain, breathing, movement, take your pick. It's hard to plan. But I find if I have a "busy" day I need to rest the following day. Today is a rest day as yesterday was a family dinner out in Petty Harbour, a lovely spot, see pic below that I took in the later evening. Today, everyone is going off to have a meal at a place I love but I knew the car-ride of a few hours along with socializing with a pile of people and the car-ride back would do my head and my body in.

(4)Accessibility planning. Lately I found that those we were meeting were at the most distant table in the restaurant, already seated. Great view but what felt like two miles from the door. Last night was even worse. They get to places early and were there when we got there. I had to traverse the main floor, up a terribly rickety staircase and then traverse the second floor to their distant table - and dear gawd, they chose one of those dreadful high tables with stools. Luckily I had my cane, George, with me so I could clamber on and off the stool. I find they were remarkably insensitive to the needs of a visibly mobility challenged person but chose not to say anything as one of them is, tragically, terminally ill.

(5)Bathrooms. I always need to plan and clock the presence of. Need I say more?

(6)Tests, xrays, scans, this could be almost full time. And each one takes a day. Organizing a helper and possibly a driver as the main hospital is a nightmare of parking and accessibility with endless corridors to navigate, thus necessitating a wheelchair volunteer. No candy stripers of old here to help out. Often Daughter has to take the day off work to help out and I feel so bad about this as it eats into her vacation time. Another stress factor for the old. Leaning on our children for assistance and trying so very hard not to feel guilty about it. 

(7) Multiple other issues but this blog post is too long as it is. Inflation. Food prices. Budgeting. Medical expenses not covered by health care (in home lab work, physiotherapy, dental, hearing, podiatry, pandemics (yeah, plural). And more I am forgetting about. Fear of "The Home". Lack of home assistance for those who wish to stay independently living.

How are you all finding the busy-ness of aging?

Life Management

It's tricky this business of life management once old age, pain, lack of energy, unpredictable moods plus this pandemic come into the picture.

I sometimes scream inwardly: take me now.

I did this at the car dealership yesterday, waiting for an emergency job on my car to be over with. Nothing to do with the staff who were incredibly helpful in a terribly busy day. But walking back and forth between the distant waiting room and the technician to review and approve the work with no seating where he was, was a crisis of endurance for me even though George, my cane, was there to lean on. I literally felt ill. It was a nerve wracking day with a short spurt at the beach to calm my nerves when Daughter picked me up between dental appointments (crown work). I hate being seen like this. Needy. In pain. Breathing all out of alignment.

I was exhausted. I am exhausted a lot. Everything seems like another hill to climb if I don't manage me and my energies well. Sometimes there is nothing left over.

Daughter organized this quiet day for my birthday last weekend, she sees and senses, as no one else, the limits of my endurance. I can pretend at times when with others (oh the effort!) that life is hunky dory, but the strain of this catches up with me and flings me to the metaphorical ground and I have to isolate. I hate being seen when I feel defeated by everything and everyone.

And it's not just the physical stuff that drains me. It's the mental and emotional as well. Emails, texting, visiting, phone-calls, social expectations. Very few understand this and I am grateful to those who do. Sometimes I have nothing left for a few days and need to recuperate.

All these feelings are exacerbated by the pandemic of course. And I am very aware of that.

Meanwhile, I sat among some en-plein-air artists on the beach yesterday and did nothing, said nothing, just watched the artists and the baby ducks and the water. And emptied my mind for an hour shoving the enormous burden of all that ailed and troubled me aside.

Time of the Year, Time of Life

A bloody downer today.

The legs were appalling, like concrete. I was flitting around (I use flitting in an optimistic way, I don't really flit anymore) and had a few errands to run and after the 3rd errand I kind of came to a screeching halt. I was the one screeching. In fear, truly. I just knew I couldn't carry on for a minute more. I drove, fearful, to my ocean. And took a pic. And cried and cried and cried. A total snorfling pity pot. A mess.

Luckily there was no one else around. It was a wet blanket of everything wrong. The madness (I think) of getting an animal when this seizure of immobility grabs hold of me, the sadness of missing my last dear departed Ansa, old age, my effing limitations, my pain, my this, that and tho other. And no improvement in sight.

Woe is me, woe is the world around me.

Now look at that ocean. Stop sniveling. It'll be here long after you're gone. Long after everyone's gone. We are stardust. Make the most of yourself. Accept Accept Accept

Life is not hopeless.

Work with what you can.

I came back into my building, leaning on the safety bars along the the halls and a friend saw me and hustled me into her apartment and told me to sit down, put my feet up and vent all I wanted and for as long as I wanted.

And I did.

From the Other Side

I am handicapped. No way around it. A form of denial manifesting in a wish or hope of “improvement” in the future I have now trashed as a pipe dream of unreality.

I was up against it last night. Evenings and nights are my worst time to walk. And it was a massive distance – traversing corridors on two different vast and shining floors of the university after maneuvering myself off a huge parking lot. I had to stop many times and lean on my cane (a fairly constant pal now). My two companions, frankly, irritated me with overly concerning themselves with my condition often to the point of massive irritation which manifested itself in rudeness. I have done this myself in the past with offerings of assistance but not with any "helpful" advice as they did (“maybe you should consider a wheelchair, consider a zimmer?”) last night. They meant well. I know they did. Then one said I should consider the surgery (12 weeks in hospital) as her mother, who died last year, was very well taken care of in the 12 weeks she had been in that hospital. I did snap at her a little (I was in extreme pain at the time) and asked her what her terminal mother had to do with my condition which involved vein and artery stripping and a brutal recovery if successful or not.

So all this is to say that I apologize to anyone physically challenged who has crossed my path before. I have tried to be careful and kind but sometimes it just isn’t enough.

These days I have doors slammed in my face, kids running and tripping over my cane nearly toppling me, the non-handicapped parking “for a minute” in a designated handicapped spot and comments like “well you’re walking, it can’t be that bad,” or “so many are far worse off than you,” or “everyone has a cross to bear in life”.

Jeez, as if I don’t know all these tired tropes off by heart and meditate on them periodically on a bad day. Today is a bad day. But I’m heading out on some book selling errands and a drop off of a small gift to a dear old couple (5 years older than I qualify as old).

Let’s all be kind and careful.

And mindful of each other.

Day Zero

I watch the seabirds flying close to the stormy bay, eyes alert for fish. I throw out some seed for the littler birds. It's cold and windy and bitter out here.

I've lost water in my house. Yesterday I lost the woodstove too. Leo sorted out the chimney for me so I have heat again. But the water? No idea what's going on. I turned off the pump. I do have a container to make coffee or soup.

I'd like someone to come and take care of me. The downside of living alone is when things go wrong. As they will. Or two or three things go wrong. And there's no one to worry-share.

It begs the question: How many of us are brave and stoic on the outside and crying in fear on the inside? How come the chin-up and chest-out manifesto is our fall back scenario?

Is life just a performance for most of us? Be brave, we're told since childhood, don't cry, this won't hurt a bit - the first Big Lie apart from Santa Claus.

In an odd way I found out how really brave and uncrying I have been.

"You've had this disease for at least 10 years," says my vascular surgeon, "And you've completed how many distant road races?"

"Seven, eight, nine?" I say.

"You must have been in terrible pain at the end of them all?"

"Yes, I was," I admit,"I felt like fainting."

"The vascular system in your legs from the knees down has deteriorated by 60%. The thing is I could surgically intervene, and the odds are not good, or you could work on creating an alternative vascular system in your legs. It' going to hurt like hell and there will be many tears but it can be done."

I'm too old for this shyte, I think. I'm tired. I'm not brave anymore.

And then so many are worse off than I. And I feel small and selfish.

"I'll see you in six months" he says, "But if you sustain an injury or notice blackness or bruising in your legs, you are to call me right away."

"Remember," he adds, "Forty-five minutes a day of brisk walking through the pain and tears. It can be done!"

They're not your effing legs and pain, I think meanly, as I smile at him, his father born in Mayo, his pin-striped 3 piece suit right out of Central Casting: Mr. Surgeon.

Can I do more pain?

And continue writing this shyte on a blog, when so many like me are giving up blogging?

WWW - Unlimited.

My mind has always been my freedom. Ever since I was quite tiny.

When troubled I would lie on my small bed face down and imagine myself soaring over hills and mountains and then off into the sky, cruising over waves and boats and trees and houses.

"Oh" said my friend D to me last year, a couple of days before she died, "I can't bear the thought of my mind being gobbled up by this disease." Me too, D. Me too.

My mobility is impacted by some serious health issues. I am waiting for specialist evaluation to see if there's a solution.

But meanwhile I pace myself and prop myself on some hiking poles, counters, whatever is handy. I'm goodly for about 25 paces and then, suddenly, the power is gone, like pulling a plug out of a socket.

Dr. Google alarms me greatly so I avoid.

I also avoid talking about it with friends. There's nothing worse than a medi-bore.

Except for here.

The once.

My point? I am surprised at how unlimited I feel inside me. I celebrate all that is good and wonderful about my life.

I've discovered I'm far kinder to myself than I would have anticipated. I talk myself through fearsome challenges. And congratulate myself on a job well done if I've made it to the garage and into my car.

I've eliminated some previously terribly important and unletgoable items from my diet with ease. My goal is perhaps being under my normal weight to ease pressure on my vascular system. But I haven't overanalyzed this, it just seemed like time. I don't feel deprived. At all.

I find I'm in a really good head space. I anticipated much whining and berating of my misfortune and button-holing of willing ears. But no, that hasn't happened.

It's not a misfortune. And I don't compare to others' setbacks or worse-off scenarios - always terribly unhelpful, IMO.

It just is.

Inside, every dream is still realizable.

Health Update

Photo taken yesterday - double click for maximum effect

Thanks for all the emails and comments on my The Call post.

Following many months of inactivity due to my accident which left me for far too long partially incapacitated followed by a dismal reaction to blood pressure medication, I am left with a body that is not performing very well at the moment.

Funny how we take our good health for granted until we are stopped in our tracks and left to evaluate, (quietly and silently in my case) as to what is going on.

Results of tests: Type 2 diabetes. Some kidney distress (excessive protein), poor blood results (too much of the 'bad' cholesterol) and the usual age-related challenges.

I haven't ingested refined sugar in over 3 years. Up to December I was capable of a 16k road-race, well a trek, not a "race" as we know a race. Then my body and mind crumbled and stumbled into 2015. I had a massive amount of stress too which didn't help, I still do. I've been meditating and doing some breathing exercises and practicing love and forgiveness. And yes, it's working.

So, bringing the blood sugar down to below 10 is the immediate goal. Followed by building up, slowly, my former physical condition - not superb but efficient.

And compared with many, this is all a walk in the park, right?

And I am so aware of this.