Growing Older: Coming Up Roses, Most of the Time

I think in general, as you can tell, I'm adapting well to the process of growing old. I'm giving it my best shot anyway. Love and money would have helped, but it is what it is, I've done well enough. But there's a flip side to everything, and a sure-enough flip side to the joys of aging.

For instance, today I went to the medical imaging place bright and early to get an ultrasound scan of my thyroid gland. I do it every ten years or so, nothing critical or urgent. A friend texted me and asked what I was doing and I texted:

Me: I am flat on my back at the imaging place having an ultrasound. (At that moment the technician was out of the room so I, ever the rebel at heart, had no compunctions about using my cell phone, which was supposed to be off.)

He: "So what is the illness or injury du jour?" (We have an ongoing riff about me having hypochondriachal tendencies, despite the authenticated TMJ problems I've had this summer.)

Me: I'm still on the table in a dark room. The technician says I have to wait because he wants to check this with the doctor. I will probably be airlifted out of here.

He: Do they airlift to Ancora? (the local psychiatric hospital)

So yes, there's a downside, like being alone and semi-afraid during medical tests, and relying on text messages to cheer you.

In this case, all was fine and I really don't mind going alone, God knows I'm used to it. When my kids were young I didn't believe in babysitters, my husband was seldom around since he was a commercial fisherman, so I had to take all five of the kids along to things like this, and hope for the best outcome in the waiting room. I remember having a tooth filled while nursing a baby, and also driving eight hours with five kids, a dog and a cat, nursing baby and changing diapers as I drove, (Brittney Spears hasn't got a clue how bad it can get!)so I am after all, pretty independent.

So when the little jibs and jabs of aging start to get you, don't fret. My dear dear, oh God, SO dear father, doctor extraordinaire, used to say "Have a drink." "Take a little Prozac." "Don't worry about it." He hurt his index finger when he was nearly eighty, the first digit just sort of hung there, so that if he was pointing at something, most of his finger was doing the job but the fingernail joint was pointing at the floor. I used to say "Why don't you get that fixed?" And he and his wife Marilyn, a retired nurse with a great sense of humor and life, would say "Oh at our age we don't worry about stuff like that." I would say "But the Queen Mother got a hip replacement in her nineties!"...and they would say "That's great! But that is not for us." And anyway, he didn't want to have to stop taking his Coumadin blood thinner, because if he had the finger repaired while taking a blood thinner, little things like that can make you bleed to death. And the blood thinner was keeping his heart going I guess. So there are trade-offs.

Trade-offs, compromises, disappointments, readjustments, bodily dysfunctions, changed energies, new perspectives: all part of the package when you shift away from youth, and eventually from life. It's just the deal. Dear old dad never minded being old, and always said "It beats the alternative." And even there, a door is open. If you must accept the alternative, there is still all that philosophy, religion, and even science and logic, offer us: eternity.