The Golden Years: What Nobody Told Me - By Jane Everham
I’ve heard folks grumble about The Golden Years for a long time, but the grumbles came from folks in their late 70s and 80s. “Everything starts to go south in your 80s,” they say. My mechanic once said, “Well, this old car with 250,000 on it miles has a right to leak oil.” Maybe we all have a right to start wearing out – to “leak oil.” Maybe. I’m not there yet, still have a dozen years to go, so why am I wearing out already?
Last month I was told that the childhood asthma that I proudly outgrew in high school has returned, to such an extent that I now have mild COPD. My pulmonologist thinks maybe the COPD can be reversed. I choose to believe her despite the fact that nothing on the internet says it can be reversed. I suppose I am hoping for a corrected diagnosis, but for sure and for the moment, I’d rather believe my doctor than Google.
I hadn’t heard about allergies starting or recurring in later life. I’d heard of post-polio syndrome (enough of a horror) but not this other bit. More than a bit actually. Now I have two inhalers and a pill to take each night. I have to be careful in the cold, use my inhaler before exertion, wash my hands often, carry Purell in my purse, stay away from sick people, and be on the alert for other as yet unknown triggers. And as a writer-wanna-be, that last sentence just killed the Rule of Three and hurts my ego.
I’ve always known I don’t have the same lung capacity as others, but it didn’t manifest other than I felt I couldn’t inhale completely. It didn’t interfere with my very active life. Now with this diagnosis of COPD I am being told my inhales are actually fine but I don’t exhale completely. What a flip! For years I have exhaled at length in confined spaces where someone had just coughed. In air turbulence if you exhale completely and hold it, you don’t experience that stomach-dropping effect. I thought I was pretty good at exhaling. Now I have breathing exercises to increase my exhaling ability. Jeesh!
Back to triggers: Dust is big, and even though I have housekeepers that come twice a month, dust doesn’t just settle twice a month; it’s there always, sifting invisibly in the air, dug into my carpet and embedded in my tweed-cloth sectional. Lifestyle changes are in order. Wood floors, leather furniture, fewer horizontal features. This I don’t mind, I was thinking of redecorating anyway, and I am fortunate I can afford the upgrades.
What I really mind is once again wearing the mantle of a “sicky.” Certainly, no adult peers will tease me; this is not an external discomfort but a strictly internal woe. I have a med-minder (I was warned about memory loss, though I’d hoped it would arrive later) which had only one pill in it. Now I have two and a growing anxiety that it could swell from there. I was reconciled to the fact that when this “old truck of a body starts to leak oil” I would probably need a more extended med-minder, but now? I was sure that my clean living would possibly carry me well past the 80 mark. Nobody told me about this premature arrival ofThe Not So Golden Years.
So here I am in the prime of life at 68 already complaining about my health, another thing I had planned not to do. So, let’s flip again – I can still think, write, read, walk, travel, eat, drink, breathe (yes, I can), make and keep the dearest of friends, listen to music, drive, dance (not well but I couldn’t do that before), volunteer, march at rallies, stroke a cat, text, email, and find joy in the simplest of moments of life like spotting a Downey Woodpecker tapping on my pear tree. Life has thrown me a curve, but I plan to gently press the accelerator as I— safely keeping the tires on of the road— power on through the rest of my life.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs in the 50's and 60's. I moved to Colorado to attend Denver University and with two exceptions (a year of study abroad in Spain and a year as a flight attendant in Miami), I have lived in Ft. Collins, Colorado with no intentions of ever leaving. After earning an Educational Specialist degree in School Psychology at UNC, I worked for 34 years in the public schools in Cheyenne, Wyoming and Fort Collins, Colorado.
After retirement in 2011, I have been kept out of trouble with active volunteering with the Larimer League of Women Voters, Foothills Unitarian Church, and progressive politics wherever I can find them. I love to have lunch with friends, read voraciously, and travel.
