SEVENTY PLUS AGAIN

SEVENTY PLUS—AGAIN.

When I started writing this stuff, I stated that one reason was to try to reveal some things about what it is like to be over seventy.  It is time to do some more of that, and,  at the same time try to avoid whining.  I hate whining.

It is important to realize that seventy plus is very different for some than it is for others. I know people my age who have been in nursing homes for several years.  On the other hand, I sing in a choir with a guy who is only a year younger than me and he runs in at least one or two half-marathons a year.  His wife, only a little younger, has completed 18 marathons, most of those after she became sixty.  

Some folks my age are really hurting financially.  So far, for my wife and myself that has not been a problem, though, if one or the other of us passes, problems could loom.  There has been a lot of bad mouthing of southern education, but Georgia has made a good faith effort to pay teachers, at all levels, a living wage.  Not a sumptuous wage, but a living wage, and the Georgia Teachers Retirement is both good, and stable. I’m glad I came here to complete my career.

  I read a column about Georgia Education today, and some of the stuff was irritating.  I don’t think there is a thing wrong with Georgia Education that wouldn’t be solved if everyday Georgians could begin to take education  and that of their children seriously, and if at least half of the administrators in Georgia schools (at all levels) were either fired or returned to the classroom.  (Administrators have to justify their existence.  The most common way is to create situations where teachers have to stop teaching and generate paper work that administrators can keep on file to justify their existence).  There is a part of me that would advocate that EVERY administrator should be required to actually teach at least half time. (Then they would be too busy to create paperwork.)

In my case, and in that of my wife health is an ongoing problem.  It affects us both in lifestyle and in economics.  She is arthritic, both with rheumatoid and osteo-arthritis.  She has had joints in her thumbs replaced, a knee replaced, and, after the holidays plans to have some finger joints fused.  One of her biggest irritations is that, though she loves to read, she has a lot of trouble HOLDING  a book.   I worry about her a lot.  I, on the other hand, have high blood pressure, have had a quadruple cardiac bypass, osteo-arthritis in my shoulders and knees, and have had a peripheral motor neuropathy since the early nineties.  (no body knows what caused it, it is a general complication of diabetes, but I don’t have diabetes)  I used to have a lot of trouble explaining a neuropathy, but the national diabetes association has a commercial now, with some guy putting on his socks which turn to hornets as he pulls his socks up.  That, basically is me, if you add numb fingers and the same kind of pain in my arms that would be shared by someone with carpal tunnel syndrome (actually it IS a form of carpal tunnel).  We sound like a mess.  Actually we are more inconvenienced that anything else.  I have quit shopping at stores that don’t have baskets that I can walk behind (Those damn kids are always trying to take my basket away so that I can’t use it to walk to the car---Growl.)  All in all, it is enough to justify disabled tags on our cars, but not enough to keep us from using them.  I used to whine and complain a lot, but I know so many who have so many other problems that I have learned to be grateful for what I have.  It also causes economic stress.  My co-payments for prescriptions (with a good insurance plan) run about 125.00 to 150.00 a month.  It would be more fun to buy ice-cream, but at least, I have the money to pay them.

Minor humor moment:  Back in the nineties before I retired but after I had lost the fluent use of my legs, I pulled up to a handicapped space in a Savannah Mall, and started into the mall, when a newschick (I’m sorry, I am not a total chauvinist, but it is the only term that fits) rammed a microphone into my face (her cameraman was close behind her) and asked me “What is your physical problem that you have to use a handicapped space?  You don’t seem to be using crutches.”   I looked at her for a moment, then asked “How long has it been since you had breast augmentation surgery?”  There was a pause, she turned a little red and said, with emphasis, “What business is it of yours whether I have had it or not?”  My reply was “You seemed to feel that you had the right to ask me personal questions, so I assumed that I had the same right.”  Steam came out of her ears for a second, then she waved her arm to the photographer and stomped off to assault her next victim.

I find myself caught between envy of those who have fewer physical problems and gratitude that ours aren’t as bad as those of other people.  The biggest worry I have is the rapid degeneration of my short term memory (without that problem, I probably wouldn’t have retired when I did).  I live in fear of becoming senile or getting Alzheimer’s and creating a problem for my dear wife (who has yet to forget anything in her life, of which I am aware).  Another problem which is shared by many, is that we are both deaf as posts so we shout at each other a lot, and constantly assume that the other is aware of something that is going on that “we told them about”, all the time.  Sigh, it does create problems.  We spent a lot of money on hearing aids a few years ago, and that was not much of an improvement (though it helped me some in teaching classes.).  
My deafness is a result of noise pollution while I worked as a boilermaker for the Union Pacific railroad in my twenties.  Everyone who did what I did lost all the high frequencies rather young.  I worry about these guys driving around in cars with sound that actually vibrates the car, and wish I could warn them, but when you are young and dumb no one can control your life, not even you.

Well, I didn’t cover some of the things I wanted to, but this is too long already.  Someday I’ll really shock you and show you a picture of the pills I take every day.
Sometimes I don’t even believe it myself.