Can We Talk 2

Getting Old Is Not for Sissies

         I just got over a six week run of headaches and neck aches. It's only on one side of my head, and I'm told it's muscle tension. I can't take anything but Tylenol, and that's limited. So I don't get a lot of relief. I've had physical therapy before, and it takes a while before that helps, but I remember a lot of the procedures. The first time I talked to a doctor about it was in 1996. I might go six months or more without a headache, but when the neck starts hurting, the pain goes on for 3 to 4 weeks. This time was a record.

         So it finally stopped. Two whole days with no pressure, no pain in the neck or shoulders, no sinus trouble. Then I threw out my back again. It hurt almost the entire month of September last year. It had been a decade before that. This time, I know what triggered it, but I won't waste time here complaining about fixing a problem someone else created. So now, I can't go to the gym, can't weed the flowerbeds, or lift every day things around the house. You would think that would be a relief, but it hurts to get in and out of the car, step into the bathtub, and lean over the sink when washing my face. Sitting down and getting up is very slow. I look even older than I feel by the way I move.

         The first time I noticed the skin on my arms had turned to crepe paper, I was driving the car, and the sunlight shone on my forearms. I was horrified! When had this happened? Was I having an allergic reaction to something? Then it hit me. I was wearing new prescription eyeglasses. I was seeing what everyone else had already seen. I was even more horrified. I had crossed some old lady line, and other people knew it before I did.

         I also get cramps in my feet and legs and hands. From the commercials I see on TV, I get the impression that this is quite common. How did old age come on so fast? Why is it so mean? When do my golden years have a golden gleam? How did my outside get so wrinkly before my inside? Well, obviously my physical inside is getting old, too. But inside my spirit, I'm still young. I still want to plan for a long future and experience new things. I want to live in ways which don't work with my outsides. I'm still learning, growing, and yearning. I'm waiting patiently for pains to subside and get on with the real living.

         I say hurray for the farmers who are still laboring hard into their 70's and 80's. Hurray for older folks who still ride horses and groom them themselves. Hurray for the doctors and scientists who won't retire. I have a friend in her mid 80's, who does all her own yard work in a very large yard in a high falutin' neighborhood, and still goes to the church to pull weeds every week. Hurray for her. Hurray for the elderly directors and actors who won't give up, even though I may not have liked them even when they were younger.

         If you're able to keep doing what you love, be it doctoring, acting, butchering, farming, sewing, writing, or whatever, keep doing it! Don't let the aches and pains, the hearing loss, giving up your driving license, or slowness of body make a sissy of you. What you lack in strength, stamina, and agility, you make up for in knowledge, wisdom, and experience. We're slow, but we're still here.