I was inspired to share this story by a friend of mine, I will call her C. who recently shared a brutally honest, and heart felt post on the FB about aging. She talked about mammograms that bruise, colonoscopies that somehow rate higher on the comfort scale and the betrayal of vision for folks in their 40’s. She shared about perimenopause being on easy mode, and that she is knocking on wood it stays that way and about the body she’s living in now will no doubt one day feel like a luxury suite compared to the one her future self will inherit.
What struck me was not the catalog of indignities, but way
she was looking at them, frustration on one hand, gratitude on the other hand
and a reluctant appreciation. The kind
of appreciation that, at least to me, tells part of her story, that she understands
the alternative to that is not being here, no longer riding the ride. I have in past typed about getting older and
all that one can only understand having endured it. So, thanks C. for inspiring me to type a bit
about my own journey.
So, I have been alive now 22,257 days, and yes that counts
leap years for those who always ask when I count days. In that time, computers became faster, thanks
Gordon Moore, they became smaller, thanks Jack Kilby, and they became smarter,
thanks Geoffrey Hinton. In that same time
frame, I have become slower, thanks younger dumbass Smitty, I have become creakier,
thanks again younger stupid Smitty, and I am more likely to mutter, what the
hell was I doing, while I am actually doing that very thing, thanks universe
for providing the absolute fucking hilarity in that.
Somewhere along the journey, my metabolism deprecated half
of its features, the better half of course so thanks again for the hilarity
universe. My joints, not the ones
smoked, started issuing bug reports, with an alarming and continuously increasing
cadence. And food I once inhaled due to
its magnificence, without consequences I might add, now require full diplomatic
negotiations with my digestive system, which I never seem to be on the right
side of. I remember Granny loved pork
chops and they hated her, she ate them anyway because she loved them. My younger self did not understand that, I do
now.
Aging feels a lot trying to run modern software on windows
3.1, disk space too fragmented, not enough ram and not anywhere near enough CPU
cycles. My knees click, my joints buffer
and the whole system throw warnings like a drunken Sailor running up a bar tab,
and I was one of those so I know of what I type. Somewhere in the middle of all that noise
clarity shows up, or at least it did for me.
That means a bit more grace for myself, a little less ego, and the quiet
realization that half the worries I used to worry about don’t matter at all. One benefit of those realizations is that it
is easier to uninstall the stuff that is actually irrelevant in my life.
As you know I have old cars and they as they get older start
to require more and more preventative maintenance. I have been fortunate in that regard, only
taking two medications, one for blood pressure due to being a bit tubby, and
one I will talk about later. Other than
that, there are a few vitamins each morning.
Of course, at 40 was the first prostate exam, which after my long time
doctor performed, I tried to lighten the mood my asking if he and I could go out
back and have a smoke together, I smoked by then. After bit of awkward silence, he laughed and
it became our annual joke.
On year 49 we are finishing up my annual physical, and the
prostate probe, and he starts with this sort of evil laugh. I was not sure what that meant but immediately
got nervous. I asked anyway, what’s up
doc, and yes that was in bugs bunnies voice.
He says, and I shit you not, I get to violate you in a whole new way
next year. To which I said, what?? He wanted to get a baseline colonoscopy for
me to reference later in life. Being a
tech nerd I understood the importance of a baseline but could not help blurting
out, that is not right Doc, to which he again provided me his evil little laugh.
So I say all that to lead into what I experienced on day 22,251
of my journey. Somehow I made it that
far without ever having a “medical procedure” that required anesthetic, just 29
days before my 61st Birthentines day. Broken bones, sure, chainsaw incident, sadly yes, and other stitches and what not, yep but never anything that rose to the "procedure" level. This corrective maintenance was addressing
the other medication I took each day, and that is called tamsulosin, or more generically
Flomax. That is a medication to address issues
with being able to pee like I could when I was young, due to aging and enlarged
prostate.
When I first spoke to a urologist they presented 4 options,
with Flomax being the least invasive. The
other three were medical procedures that actually could address the issue,
thereby eliminating the need for a pill to treat the symptoms. The first was a steaming process, yikes but
OK. The second was a sort of stapling
back affair and the third was basically a mechanical roto-routering, which was
most invasive according to her. After a
few minutes of allowing myself to digest all of that I asked if they were all
like Lasic surgery.
She got a confused look on her face and said, this has
nothing to do with your eyes. I
clarified and asked is this a moment in time procedure? She asked me to say more, I said with Lasic
you are correcting the eye to a moment in time.
As we continue to age, the eye will continue to degrade, she got it
then. Any of these procedures are moment
in time fixes and as your prostate continues to grow, this problem will come
back. My next question was which one has
the longest time before additional corrective actions are required. And of course, it was the most invasive of
the three, the roto-routering, medically referred to as a Transuretheral Resection
of the Prostate, TURP for short. I had
that procedure scheduled in Oregon and then decided to upend our lives and move on our to
Nebraska, so it got delayed.
While I did not have many I did have come nerves about getting
put under, more than I did about the procedure.
I asked every nurse, doctor and bystander up until they knocked me out
if they had been partying last night, if they felt ready to go and were properly
caffeinated. The smiles and laughs helped
ease my nerves. The doctor did the deed,
inserted the catheter and sent me to room to spend the day, the night and most
of the next day. Having a catheter was
more just uncomfortable than painful and Tylenol worked. When the nurse took it out 4 days later, she
seemed unaffected but for me that was a bit of indignity and it VERY uncomfortable,
she said take a deep breath and she just yanked that fucking thing out, I lost my breath
and was thankful I was sitting down as surely I would have toppled over and broke
something else.
I am on day six of recovery now and everything seems ahead of schedule, fingers crossed for that to continue. Out of an adult diaper after 2 days, needed for what the doc called “leakage” and now i am using a feminine hygiene product as
the “leakage” has slowed to nearly a stop. I picked randomly the Always brand Infinity
flex-foam in size #2 and it works magnificently, yeah that is something you now know.
So, here I am on day 22,257, patched, prodded, roto-routered,
cathetered, padded and somehow still laughing at the absurdity of it all. Aging keeps throwing new maintenance cycles
at me, and I keep showing up for the updates, even when the release notes include
things like, temporary leakage and unexpected system warnings. But ya know what, underneath all the jokes, indignities
and windows 3.1 era operating limitations, there is still a profound gratitude
for being alive long enough to complain about any of it. Gratitude for modern medicine and the brilliant
band of doctors that keep me running. And
gratitude for friends like C, and the rest of Y’all who tell the truth about
their journey with humor and courage. That
is my reminder that this whole messy and complicated ride is worth EVERY SINGLE
MOMENT!!!
Love Y’all
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