Friday Fumbles

I was at my second consultant examination this week. Two separate days. Both taking place in the Health Science Centre which is a rambling spreading behemoth of recent design. Poor signage, endless walking, limited parking, limited wheelchairs. In other words incredibly stressful even if you're young and active like Niece and Daughter, but beyond the pale for seniors like me with physical challenges.

So I haul along my friend for these multitude of appointments and insist on paying her for her services as it is a huge chunk of time (often 3 hours for a 10 minute appointment) out of her life and she has to play hunt the parking spot and hunt the wheelchair as, seriously, the walking through the sprawl has to be seen to be believed and impossible for me and George, my cane, to manage.

So it was there, as I was finally in the waiting room, I said to her: "Why in the name of the goddess am I putting myself through all these consults and tests and evaluations? I am completely stressed out and hello quality of life?"

Now I hasten to add cancer is not on anyone's radar, so I am free to say that. Cancer would be another story entirely.

So I saw the new consult, who is added to the team of my healthcare. Which I am so grateful for and all effing free (sorry USA). He is a surgeon charged with managing my anemia. I liked him immediately.

I told him about my conversation in the waiting room and he then proceeded to review what he would have to do to my body to find the causes of this failing blood and tiredness issue.

Dear gawd, I said to him:

"Lights down the stomach, lights up the bowels and like you mention, odds of nicking something, slim though they are. I will be 77 in August. I am stressed just sitting in your waiting room and evaluating all these appointments and my life taken over by monthly visits to each of my team not to mention blood draws and lung xrays. And I beg the question why? What is it doing for me in the long run?"

"You know," he responded, "I can't advise you on this decision, only you can do that. But I can tell you I hear you. And if I was facing 77 I would want to enjoy myself too and not have to worry about procedures like these. I'll let your GP know what we talked about. And try and eat really healthily. It might improve your blood readings, they are pretty dismal."

So there you have it. And I wonder if this is the path I need to take. Disconnect from the medical specialist team, see my GP once a month and enjoy what's left of my life. Apart from routine maintenance and taking my daily truckload of pills. I'm sticking with the beta blockers. I seem to have crossed the hurdle of depression and flatlining. And my blood pressure is in the normal range after so many years of elevated. Wowser.

In the Beginning....Part 1.

When I bought this place over 13 years ago, I knew my relationship with my darling house and land would all end some day. I'm very conscious of the ticking of my own clock. I stay in moments and cherish them and reflect on my privilege and gratitude to have this house overlooking the ocean, surrounded by trees and hills, with views right out of some exotic magazine. With its own off the grid artist's cabin tucked up on the hill overlooking the bay.

We are so finite in this world and sometimes a tap on the shoulder comes, intuition if you will, and we must pay attention.

My friend Helen's death was a huge tap for me. Then a whole series of friends fell to the wayside shortly thereafter way before their time. I say way before their time when, really, what is human time? Three score plus ten? I've been losing friends since I was six when Geraldine died of meningitis and at eight Eithne was burned in a house fire and at fifteen Rosario had brain cancer. So death walks along beside me even though many of us behave as if we have two hundred years to live. And to live with full mental and physical functions intact. Not so. Take a look around at your Zimmer frames, oxygen tanks and wheelchairs and bewilderments in the supermarkets. I do. Not morbidly but noddingly, know what I mean? Constantly aware too that most health impacted seniors don't shop for themselves so we don't see the Alzheimer's, the dementia, the legless and blind and stroke victims.

I thought to take charge then, back in 2015. I live alone. Have a fierce streak of independence, turned down potential partnerships here, 3 or 4 at last count to offer an example, and wish to be proactive rather than reactive to any future challenges I might face.

I remember a dear blog friend, I was her role model of aging well for some reason, saying at one point: "Well it's a good job I have ten more years to catch up to you and loads of time to live creatively" but sadly she didn't. She died Christmas 2013 rather quickly, from cancer.

So the power of now became a mantra for me long before it was fashionable.

To be continued.....

Crossroads

Many questions.

Few answers.

Processing thoughts, some conflicting or rubbing off each other in sparks.

Questions:

How do you make major decisions in your life?

Intuition?

Evaluation - pro and contra columns?

Talk to loved ones that you trust?

Throw it out there to the universe (something like I'm doing right now!)

Yeah, I am at a crossroads.

Sometimes we just run into ourselves head on.

Time is far more precious to me than it ever was.

And there's not enough of the tempus thing. It fugits through my fingers.

All week I was running, 5 days of it. Meetings, training, seminars. Non-stop it seemed.

This old house has lost its magic, it needs too much attention from me along with Elder Dog, Ansa. I need most of my attention for me now.

And I'm fresh out, overnight it seems, of the magic-steam of helping others.

Nervously, I ran the insides of my brain under Daughter's gaze yesterday. And she validated everything I was saying. She'd been reluctant to broach Crossroads with me. Relief was enormous. For both of us.

There is no one else, apart from My Dear Dead Ones, that I would trust with offering me support or advice or compassion or wisdom.

Like I said: Crossroads.

Major.

Thoughts?

This happens to everyone, right?

Do you ever think to yourself why does everything have to happen at once? So many events in the one time period that the head wants to burst with the decision making process and the BP soars with the stress of making the right one.

Next month is when my particular world is having numerous celebrations.

First of all there is a family wedding which is in Argentina. If I was going to Argentina, I would have to visit my brother in Santiago in Chile. If I was going to Chile I'd have to go to Peru, Machu Picchu has never been taken off the bucket list. The big trip to South America would happen - and that doesn't come cheap, and would have to do me for oh, say, the next 10 years of vacations.

Next up there is a major high school reunion which should be poignant and wonderful as many of our graduating class are dead: a more than average percentage to breast cancer. Our gorgeous old school is on an island in the middle of the River Lee and perhaps the effluvia from Murphy's Brewery up the road had something to do with it. No environmental watchguards in those days and the only fish in the river which made us all 'ew' were big ugly dirty mullets. With encrusted whiskers on them.

Then there is the 95th birthday party for an uncle, the uncle who was married to my absolutely favourite aunt in the whole wide world and his scattered family are all coming home for that.

Then there is the annual picnic of my mother's family which takes place on Irish Mother's Day (different from the North American) and English cousins are coming home for that along with my only living aunt who is well over ninety.

Then there is the final few weeks of rehearsals for the play I've written and am directing and which is exciting the hell out of all of those involved in it.

All of these events are happening in the same 3 week span of time and I simply can't wrap my head around any decisions at all. I had heard there was a direct St. John's to Paris flight which would make my life a whole lot easier but now I can't find a trace of it on the interwebz so will have to track down an old fashioned travel agent.

These are good choices, I remind myself. All validations of life and forward thinking in this oh so fragile little planet of ours.

So what the hell am I to do?