Recently, a dear friend wrote to ask for guidance about how to approach a new stage she’s entered that involves dealing with the pains that beset an aging body.
I think the two of you might have a fair amount of wisdom and maybe medical expertise – – navigating medical expertise —around the physical challenges of aging.
Although the note was addressed to both of us, Rosellen has a story very different from mine, so I’m responding here only from my own perspective and experience. There are some aspects of the aging body about which I have a lot to say. They mostly have to do with mobility issues. My world has shrunk considerably because I can now walk only a fraction of the distance I used to be able to cover. My legs grow heavy and drive me to scan the area for benches, stoops or low walls on which I can “take a load off.” My range took an even greater hit five or six years ago when I decided to surrender my bike the way I will one day have to hand over the keys to my car. I could no longer trust my balance and had become a menace to myself and others.
There’s also an aesthetic dimension to my mobility challenges. I hate the way I navigate stairs – that sideways stance that attacks each step as its own challenge. Even worse, I hate to have others watch me performing this anti-dance which represents the ultimate surrender to aging and which makes me feel much older than I do right now sitting in my desk chair, still mostly in control of my mental machinery. That stair shuffle is repeated when I step off a curb or navigate any terrain that presents the possibility of falling, that demon of aging, to be kept at bay at any cost.
And then there’s the loss of strength as muscle mass melts away. My hands can no longer vanquish the bottle tops that require unscrewing, and I’m forced to scan the room for an abler body than mine, male or female. The other day I was defeated by a restaurant door that proved as formidable as a blocking dummy on the football practice field. I had to yield to a young man who was entering behind me. These are such small indignities, but they signal deeper, more hidden declines.
But I think my friend was primarily seeking advice about dealing with pain, on which the elderly don’t have a monopolybut is a more frequent visitor to their circles than to the worlds of younger folk. And here I find myself confronting a serious obstacle. I can’t recall a single instance in my 86+ years when I have had to deal with anything more than fleeting, momentary pain. This is a ridiculous and even somewhat embarrassing admission for a person of my age. I have never broken a bone, had a headache, wrestled with a serious illness that involved pain or had an accident that was accompanied by pain. There was an incident when I collided with a bike and rider when I was running along the lakefront in Chicago. I didn’t even realize I was injured until I returned home and the initial protective adrenaline rush had worn off. I remember feeling soreness and an ache, which to my mind is different from pain in severity and persistence. Even falling down a flight of stairs didn’t yield more than an injured ankle that didn’t hurt enough to make walking difficult.
It’s possible that I have a higher – or is it lower – threshold for pain than others, but I don’t think so. I think my relatively blank slate is attributable to a combination of sheer dumb luck and an active aversion to physical risk taking. I recently read about a woman who celebrated her hundredth birthday by going sky diving. She suffered no ill effects, but it’s not something I could ever imagine doing, now or when I was twenty-five.
I’m reporting all this not to portray my limited experience with pain as a reflection of some kind of moral virtue. The fact is that through a large dose of luck and a much smaller portion of good judgment my ability to deal with pain has not really been tested. Just putting those words on paper is terrifying because we never know what lies ahead and whether the future will bring experiences that will more than balance this relatively unblemished record. I fear I may be cursing myself.
Meanwhile, rather than gloating I’m beset by a sense of overwhelming guilt as I watch family and friends dealing with pain that I can do nothing to assuage. I watch Rosellen doubled over with relentless waves of back pain, friends who report experiences with kidney stones and shingles that they classify as the worst pain they have ever felt. I know people whose recurring migraines drive them to their beds in darkened rooms. All of the above are the real heroes for carrying on in the face of the assaults on their bodies. These are the people my inquiring friend should consult, regardless of age, for the words of wisdom she requests. On that front I am an 86-year-old virgin.
