Tag: aging

Whatever You Do, Don’t Look Back

~ Judy ~ 2 Comments
RESOLVED: BUY MORE CUTE SHOES

Made my list of New Year’s resolutions yet again. I find that list-making gives me a sense of accomplishment, almost like actually doing the things on the list. Probably the only 2010 resolution I kept was quitting smoking, a big surprise to me and no doubt others, motivated primarily by fear. I may have kept other resolutions. I don’t remember them anymore.

Reflection is good though. I wanted to reflect on the many memorable events of last year, but for the most part I just came up with things that annoyed me, like:

1. The stitches behind and under my ear were supposedly removed two weeks after surgery, yet every other week another fragment of surgical thread works its way up and I have to yank it out myself. Is this my job? It’s gross.

2. Hi-lex has lost the bleach war. It’s a mystery to me, but there you are. I don’t like Clorox, i.e., chlorine bleach; I like Hi-lex, i.e., some other kind of bleach not chlorine that gets clothes really white. I knew of one major chain that still carried Hi-lex (a tiny island amid a sea of chlorine on the shelves), but in 2010 that store too bowed to the god Clorox. Civilization has taken a step backward, if you ask me.

3. Just when it looked like we may be nearing the end of the Paris/Britney/Lindsay madness, along came the Kim/Khloe/Kourtney insanity. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” actually won a People’s Choice Award this week (Best Guilty Pleasure). If, like me, you were trying to retain a shred of faith in the American viewing public, just forget it.

4. How is it that younger women today do not understand the concept of The Slip? One of last year’s popular fashion trends was the little print dress in silk, rayon and other clingy fabrics. Fine, but please, look in the rear-view mirror. The only people behind you who enjoy seeing every bump, bulge and ripple of cellulite are people you probably wouldn’t want to be alone with. The Slip. Learn of it.

5. Billy Joel had double hip replacement. Billy Joel! How old does that make you feel? They said it was for a lifelong congenital ailment. Right.

Maybe remembering the things that annoyed you isn’t the most positive way to start a new year. I did get a beautiful, if fat, new grandson. And I also bought some very cute shoes.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Soda Crackers

~ Judy ~ 1 Comment

That’s it. I’ve had it with surgery. If anything else goes whacko with this body, the doctors will have to make an extraordinary case for operating, and I’m not sure “or you will die” would do it. Had the tumor on my parotid gland removed last Friday and it was horrible. I wanted to die then for sure.

The thing is, I am not the best patient – ask my children, they’ll tell you. I complain, I argue, I don’t do as I’m told. I self-medicate – in the hospital, at home, I don’t care. It makes everyone crazy. And then in the hospital one is at the mercy of strangers, which keeps you from cursing as much as you might like. Some things I wanted to say in the 24 hours after surgery but didn’t:

1)  There is no anesthesia in the world that doesn’t make me nauseous, so there’s no point in telling me it shouldn’t. As my personal definition of hell is 23 hours a day of nausea and one hour of anticipation, it’s fortunate for you that there was nothing close enough to throw when I found out you were giving me only a half-dose of nausea medication. Finally, I do not want a soda cracker. If you keep pushing it, I will have to kill you.

2)  It seems no matter what time I ask, it isn’t time for more morphine. Really, is there a morphine shortage I haven’t heard about? Why are you hoarding it? Give me some!

3)  I have an IV taped to my left hand to put liquids in, another taped to my neck to take liquids out, and every other hour I have to wear inflatable leg wraps. If there is an optimal position for comfort in these circumstances, I have not discovered it. The bed is a rock, and none of its 56 amazing positions will change that. The pillow is a rock on top of a rock.

4)  Not only is my right ear and everything in the vicinity completely numb, it has the appearance of a breast implant gone terribly wrong. The scar below said ear looks like an amateur map of the Lewis & Clark Expedition. And I have bacitracin ointment in my hair. I do not feel pretty.

I can imagine the thousands of cell phone minutes burned when my daughters learned I was having surgery. “Who’s staying with Mom? What’s the plan? We need a plan!” They are patient and tolerant and sympathetic in the extreme, and after a day or so, I have to kick them out lest they lose their patience, tolerance and sympathy.

Those nodules on my thyroid gland? They will be the size of hard-boiled eggs before we part company.

Remedial Blogging

~ Judy ~ 2 Comments
REMORSE

I know. Long time no blog. I was sick. I was tired. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I got a prescription. I feel better.

Looking back:

10/27 – e-mail to lottery-playing coworkers

The Powerball pool has gotten completely off track. No point in denying it. I know it and you know it. We actually ran out of money last Wednesday, but that’s okay because I didn’t buy a ticket for Saturday anyway. I have a lot of excuses you don’t want to hear. “Where’s the money?” That’s all you people care about. So let us move along briskly.

To be in the next round, drop off your dollar by noon Friday. You’ll want to get it in quickly. By this time next week, I expect to be intolerable. I started taking Chantix on Monday (you take it for a week before you quit smoking). I expect no pats on the back, because I DON’T WANT TO QUIT. I won’t be wanting encouragement next week, I’ll be wanting a damn cigarette.

See, I’m getting grumpy already. Out of sheer rebellion, I’ve decided to get a tattoo.

10/29 – e-mail to lottery-playing coworkers

I don’t want to name names, but some of you still owe me money. Stop procrastinating.

I’m down to half a pack of cigarettes and no plan. You’re supposed to have a plan. I don’t have a plan, and that’s the story of my life. It’s crunch time, action is required, but the only plan I have is something vague in the back of my brain… quit smoking, don’t overeat, exercise more, meditate…make a plan!

By Sunday night, I’ll probably be scaring the trick-or-treaters.

10/30 – notes on babysitting for Cosette and Baby Bret while their parents go to a Halloween party

Obviously these two (Gina and Bret) need to get away. They were standing in the doorway ready to leave just about the time I picked up Baby Bret, who was screaming loud enough to curdle breast milk. They looked at me, smiled, said “Bye” and never looked back. This would have been unheard of when Cosette was three months old. The times they are a-changin’.

10/31 – notes on quitting smoking

Quit smoking. Big whoop. It’s going okay. I guess.

You always have to choose, don’t you.

The Sixties Again, Part 2

~ Judy ~ Leave a comment

 

 

WELCOMING THE GOLDEN YEARS

 

The process of aging is a strange thing. You go along blithely, knowing that each year you’re getting older but feeling immortal nonetheless. You turn 40, 50, and subtly things change. One day you start getting hot flashes – you take hormones and forget about it. Then you’re at the dollar store buying reading glasses so you can see small print. You get a pill from the doctor to take care of that acid reflux in the morning. And if you aren’t on blood pressure or cholesterol medicine, your friends are. It’s only in hindsight that you start adding things up, and then you think, “This sucks.”

But it’s turning 60 that really starts the train moving. Friends you still picture at 18 or 25 or 30, aren’t. People you used to laugh and drink with half the night start talking about their heart stints and knee replacements and won’t stay out past ten. The guy who partied too hard and got in fights on Saturday night, who should have died behind the wheel more than once, dies of cancer instead. And then one of your dearest friends in the world, who sat next to you in Sister Mary Mark’s first-grade class, dies of complications from ovarian cancer, and part of what you feel is the Sixties punching you in the nose and saying, “Pay attention, fool!” Which you sort of do. But you sort of don’t.

I went for my annual physical last month. Had to. They wouldn’t refill my prescriptions anymore. I was a little wary, as my doctor of 15 years moved on and left me in the hands of someone who could pass for 24. (She’s 34. I asked.) There were times during the physical when the new doctor just sat there studying my medical history, looking worried and saying nothing. My old doctor used to do that too, so I figured the new one knew what she was doing. I know she’s thorough, because she signed me up for more tests.

Which is what led to the discovery of two nodules in my neck, one on the thyroid gland and one on the parotid gland. They call them nodules because the word “mass” tends to alarm people, but if you ask them what a nodule is, they say, “Well, it’s a mass.” The next step, of course, is any number of tests and scans, because God forbid you should skip one and jump ahead to the place you know you’re headed anyway, The Biopsy, where they plunge a needle into your neck a lot deeper than the so-called numbing stuff goes and you end up looking like someone jammed a golf ball down your ear canal. Excuse me, that was Biopsy #1. #2 is coming up.

I don’t know for sure yet, but my nodules are looking distinctly more nodule-like than mass-like. A welcome thing, but they may have to come out regardless, which means a 3- to 4-hour surgery per nodule. A little something for me to look forward to this winter, along with quitting smoking. Because although my nodules are unrelated to smoking (hard to believe, isn’t it) you’d have to be an idiot not to see the handwriting on the wall. And that means becoming intimately acquainted with the bathroom scale again. There is absolutely nothing easy in this life. Not one thing.

It’s unseasonably hot for Minnesota in October, in the eighties yesterday and today, which makes blowing leaves a worse job than it already is. The Twins have dropped two games to the Damn Yankees in the AL playoffs. Randy Moss recognized the error of his ways and came back to the Vikings, where he was welcomed with open arms. I’ll be out in the yard blowing leaves and contemplating my nodules.
 

 

MY LONG-TERM PLAN