My apologies to my readers for a gap in postings. I’ve been sick. Nothing that serious, although I can still act like it was. Our daughter, known to you as the Princess, was a presenter at a conference in Chicago in early April, bringing back with her a nice assortment of souvenirs and the flu. Apparently, it was making the rounds, some thoughtful conference attendee spreading their germs far and wide. In a slightly amusing note, she had two job interviews the next week, zoom calls, and two of the interviewers also had caught what they were now referring to as the “Chicago Flu”.
The thing about getting sick when you’re a senior (I prefer that term to “old person”), even the routine stuff like colds, seasonal allergies, and flu, is that we don’t quite bounce back like we used to. Remember when a head cold was a couple of days coming, a couple of days with us, and a couple more going? After the worst of it, just a sore throat and a bit of stuffiness. We got back to the serious business of eating, sleeping, and watching television. A bottle of water by the bed in case your mouth got dry during the night, because it felt like those pictures of dried-up lakes in the Southwest look. Even water seems to throw our digestive track into a snit. Several days staying in comfy pajamas, because we weren’t going out. A family member or two waiting on our every need. Someone would ask, “Can I get you anything?” We’d smile pathetically and respond, “maybe a cup of tea”. Or, even more for guilt effect, “No, I’m fine.” We all knew we weren’t.
As we get older, though, the symptoms linger. We’re feeling tired longer. My nap schedule, which I developed and follow with precision, has been all over the map. A late morning nap, which I can justify because “I was awake early”. One or two in the afternoon, because, well, that’s my usual time anyway. For a while, I’d “go lie down” after dinner, and then sleep until bedtime. Even then, I’d sleep all night. I haven’t done that in quite a while. I’d just doze off at the crucial moment of our murder mystery reveal, when Her Ladyship has to tell me that it turned out to be a character they introduced while I was snoozing. We also worry that the persistent symptoms are for something deeper, stronger, more serious. Is my drowsiness due to something else? Is it one of the medications, like my cough syrup, or did a rogue tick sneak in and infect me with Lyme disease? Will there be long term effects? We’ve all had the sensation when we’re sick that we’ll never, ever, feel totally well again. A call to the doctor for answers and insight gets “it has to run its course.” Not helpful. This is it. A lifetime of debilitating inactivity, a slow spiral into nothingness. The porch furniture will have covers on until July at the earliest. The grill will be a pile of rust particles before I get back to it. Outside, everything will look like a scene from “Grey Gardens”. OK, I command myself. Pull yourself together. This isn’t the beginning of the end. Or, as our daughter, the soul of tenderness frequently reminds us, “time to book an ice floe.” Her knowledge of Indigenous culture seems limited to putting old people on an ice floe when their usefulness is exhausted or their money has run out.
I have to say, too, that the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t help our anxiety either. They’re inventing new conditions and new diseases at an alarming rate. Does it seem to you that 90% of their new, unpronounceable medications are aimed at us? Yes, I’ve noticed that too. They’re all doing big, Broadway-bound dance numbers or marching down the street like they’re heading to the Bastille, looks of pleasure and delight on their faces, telling us how they’ve “lowered their A1C”. Meanwhile, a calm voice-over tells us that, “this may cause dementia, strokes, heart-attacks, blindness, and club foot in people over 65.” My favorite is the admonishment to “stop taking it if you’re allergic to its ingredients.” Presumably, and I’m speculating here, you have to take it to find out if you are. And, by then, it’s too late. The predicted unpleasantness will be upon us.
I think what makes these new conditions so scary is that we’re reasonably sure we don’t have a condition that requires a monthly injection into the eyeball, but the seed has been planted and we’re not sure. Maybe I do have that thing that will cause the star constellations to form into people while we’re dancing in the moonlight. Maybe I could be jumping off a dock into a lake because my lung capacity has tripled, except that I wouldn’t do that anyway because I hate cold water. Are my bones getting brittle? I don’t know – I haven’t tried to snap them lately.
You know you’ve got older because your bladder has shrunk to the size of a thimble, and your digestive system makes its own decisions independently from yours. A good night’s sleep is a night where only three trips to the bathroom are involved. You climb out of bed in the morning, ready to confront a new day’s possibilities, only to . . . . head to the bathroom first. Any time I go into an unfamiliar store, I automatically locate the bathrooms. Yes, I know them all.
When reaching “senior” status, the list of medications is longer than the grocery list, and I keep a printout of everything in my wallet, just in case. A trip to the doctor mandates pulling it out so the nurse can update it on her little tablet. I’m always amused when he or she asks about “anything new?”. Of course, not – do you think I self-prescribe? The closest we come to an update is something to be deleted because we’ve been upgraded to something stronger. Most of our medications come through a mail-order service. Every couple of days, one or two new medications arrive. You can tell by the telltale pill-rattle. And they’re accompanied by sixteen pages of instructions in seven languages, even if it’s something we’ve been taking for years. We had to make a change in our health care provider, which comes through the state and is fully administered by Medicare. It also supervises the “supplemental” coverage, and is good because it saves us quite a bit. The downside, though, was that we needed to switch our medication providers. That was almost as easy as negotiating peace in Gaza, or Elon Musk’s process of deciding who in the federal government has to go. (Note: The official word is that he uses a version of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”). Along with regular notices from our old provider that “it’s time to refill”, it been interesting. A few months in, we’ve got most of it sorted.
You’ll all be happy to know that I’m feeling better now. Banished to the bathroom pharmacy are the cough medicine, the throat lozinges, the pain killers, and the decongestants. I’m still on allergy pills because, well, the pollen is hitting its stride. Come on, spring rain! I hope you’re enjoying the warm weather and the emerging blooms. I am beginning to, because, and I may not have mentioned this, I’ve been sick.
I'm Thinking...No! 