The Curmudgeonly Professor

Six Things that will Help Keep Golden Agers Sharp, Healthy, Solvent, and Interested in Life

I've thought frequently about the differences between people my age, or a bit younger, or even older, who are alert, interested, optimistic, and healthy on the one hand and those on the other hand who act like the end of the world happened years ago.  Of course, some health issues are beyond our control, but what is under our control is how we deal with the issues, how we make sure we have the best quality of life for each day, each hour, no matter how miserable we are and how much pain we are in.  Some of the most outstanding accomplishments by people have occurred during their most difficult times.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. For heaven's sake, get a computer and learn how to use it.  I'm sick and tired of hearing old people say "I'm too old to learn how to use a computer and I don't want to bother.  I'm o.k. the way I am."  The best thing we oldsters can learn to do is stay alert, and to keep learning.  We need to have our networks of friends and to keep in touch with family and friends.  We need to remain excited about the wonders of the universe.  Get off your duff and spend $400-$500 for a computer and get your ten-year old grandchild to teach you how to use it.  Only 20 people out of my Class of '49 high school graduating class, out of about 50 surviving, are using computers.
2. Turn off the stupid TV unless you are watching documentaries, or something useful, like sports.  If you can afford it, get an HDTV, the pictures will blow you away and give you a whole new perspective on the wonders and beauties of the earth.  Stop saying "this one will do me."  I'm sick and tired of hearing "this one will do me" (till I croak).  If you have one day left, or a couple of thousand, enjoy each day to the max and take advantage of technology.
3. Do some exercises.  Even chair exercises help.  If you would just get a computer, you could check
   Amazon.com and find some exercise books and CD's for all ages and all stages of defunctness.  Studies show that people even in 80s and 90s who have been wheel-chair bound are up and moving around after just a few weeks of basic exercise.  Ask for help and get off your butts and turn off the stupid TV.  Dancing with the Stars won't get you anywhere except getting a massive headache.
4. Pay attention to your finances.  Fortunately, my wife takes care of ours.  I have asked her to outlive me for this reason.  Get the help of a financial adviser if all this seems beyond you.  Find an adviser through a bank or elsewhere who will be willing to work with you no matter what your financial status is.
5. Write your life story.  If you die without telling your story, you will have done a great disservice to your descendants.  Write even a page a day.  That's 365 pages in a year.  Knock off the usual excuses like "Nobody cares about me" (pity, pity me); I can't remember anything (stuff will start flowing into your brain when you start, and you can ask others who know stuff to help you).  For heaven's sake, leave some life legacy behind you that will be treasured for generations.
6. Get a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera to use with your new computer.  Too many people are far too lazy in recording the events of life.  A camera helps you connect with nature, with your family, with family history, and with what is going on in the world.

Well, there are lots of other things to help us golden-agers keep chugging along with an interest in what is happening in our lives.  We haven't mentioned things like volunteering at the hospital or the nursing homes or the care centers; helping kids learn how to read; visiting homebound friends and neighbors; and the list goes on and on.  The point is, do something!  If you do one thing, you are more likely to get more interested in doing other things.  So I don't want to see you sitting on your butt for endless hours watching mindless TV, no matter how miserable and defunct you are.  I could find you countless people who started out more miserable than you are and who are more defunct than you are who are living purposeful, meaningful lives.

Change in the Weather: Facing Up to Weather and the Ailments of Old Age

The temperature was 37 degrees in the SL valley this morning so the last roses outside my bedroom window survived another night.  Snow moved down the flanks of the Wasatch mountains night before last but hasn't yet reached the valley floor.  Petunias everywhere are crashing, but the hardy geraniums are still surviving and blooming nicely.  My neighbor who can hardly walk to begin with is more courageous than I am, and was just ending his morning walk, rain or shine, cold or heat, a few minutes ago.  The furnace repair man is here to do a six-months checkup and, according to schedule, discovered a $79 capacitor or whatever needed replacing, which is cheaper than the ususal $500 gizmo board which he says has gone out on previous visits.  Now if we can keep the air conditioner from freezing and freaking out the whole business next spring to save getting a new $8000 furnace/ac, life will be reasonably good, but I will worry about the $8000 furnace all winter.  All this in an eight-year-old home.  According to furnace repair guy, original furnace a POC, installed courtesy of contractor sleaze.

Visited urologist yesterday for periodic visit, great young doctor with sense of humor.  If you're just cruising past 50, be prepared to become friendly with your nice urologist for PSA (prostate specific antigen, cancer signal), enlarged prostate, various frequency issues, kidney stones, and other scary stuff.  The plumbing just isn't what it was at nineteen.  People who never mentioned the prostate in early life and who didn't know what it was find out in a hurry and then discuss it clinically with other men who have just figured out what this nasty little gland can do to you if it hates you and wants to punish you.  That's over with for the time being.  Now must get tooth pulled Tuesday for another $2,000 implant and crown.  The fourth.  Still better than the dentures my inlaws got in their sixties.  All this stuff did not have a lifetime guarantee.  Your body parts hate you if you survive past 60 and then get even with you for all the stuff you didn't take care of, the 3000 mile oil change, the daily flossing you should have done and neglected, the symptoms you were too scared to go check out in their early stages, your political affiliation, if you listen to Fox News, and if you oppose the public option in health care insurance.  And some times,your body parts just get tired and give up.

Younger people hate it when older people start talking about prostates, cancer, bypasses, stents, hip replacements, knee replacements, arthritis, and any one of a million other ailments plaguing the senior citizens in their golden age that has turned, as former LDS Church president Hinckley once said, to lead.  However, young people should pay attention and take better care of themselves while they have a chance.  Also they should get busy and enjoy life and do things and go places and hike up mountain sides and run while they have a chance, because much of what was good in life in younger years becomes only distant memories while people keep saying "I wish I woulda when I had a chance."

My wife has a built-in weather forecaster, since every time the air pressure shifts, she aches like crazy for a couple of days, and we know the weather is going to get worse.  We don't even have to turn on Live 5 Viper, whatever that is, or Channel 2 Weather hand wavers and finger pointers to know what is going to happen.

Some old people (and some not so old) wander around the house at night, looking for a few minutes' sleep somewhere, taking pain pills, clearing stuffy noses, waiting for the pain to subside, worrying about their next doctors' appointments, worrying about their kids and grand kids and great grandkids, repenting of their sins--at least til morning, going to the bathroom, watching infomercials, doing crossword puzzles, sitting and sleeping in the recliner, anything to kill time waiting for morning to come.  But then, blessed day, morning daylight comes, some times sunny, some times cloudy, and most of the boogey men that haunted them all night (no one has ever mentioned boogey women?) vanish, and life goes on.  And the seasons change, and the leaves change color, and the trees start waving their bony and bare arms in the stiff winter winds, and the snow falls, and life, for a time, seems more hopeful, no matter the burdens and the aches and pains.  And the possibilities for doing good continue, for spreading some cheer, for encouraging some one who is struggling and down, for smiling at a stranger, for hugging, for watching Mother Nature in all of her splendid manifestations.  And we may even tell God thank you.

Comments

cosmetic dentist vancouver said...

How much are we suffering...How much must we endure..but becomes..How can I make the most of each day that I have left..

Earlier I wrote a post on the problems old people often have getting through the night.  A dentist from Vancouver offered the comment above, which I thought deserved a special place since his words were so beautifully and helpfully phrased.  Thank you, and comment again soon.

 

 

 

The Role of Photography in the Rise of Social Networking (And Vice Versa)

A commenter wrote a whine on another photography site to the effect that the armies of digital point and shooters, social network uploaders and downloaders, were ruining the photography profession.  Well, sorry, but get used to the digital photography revolution.  Used to be, you had to have a big room full of vats of chemicals, developing photos one at a time, or take a 35 mm. roll of film in to get developed, wait a week, and then see how many bad pictures you had.  I doubt that the point-and-shooters will ever have much effect on the serious professionals, since we will still want good professionals to take our best pictures of our most important events.  But for everyone else, we are recording history, telling stories with photos, providing images under circumstances that were impossible to record before, and doing it all the second after something happens.

Besides, how did professionals get started?  By being an amateur, and then learning, working hard, and perfecting their ability to take outstanding photos.  The more good photos we all end up with, the better will be the chronicle of our days and lives.  My sister's husband had one picture, one lonely photo, of his entire boyhood.  Now Facebook and blogs alike and Twitter messages are sending the photos of newborn babies, birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, travel events, and daily life and we all know what is going on immediately rather than wait for a couple of photo reprints to arrive weeks later.

The more people who are learning and trying to take good photos, the better our photo record will be.  And no one, under any circumstances, will be able to suppress the flow of information and graphic pictures of what is happening in the world as long as someone is there with a camera phone.  There are no restrictions, thank heaven, on who can take, send, print, share photos with anyone else in the world.  We don't have laws or rules barring amateur point-and-shooters from taking pictures of anything, anywhere, any time except for special circumstances.  Photo editing software is becoming more ingenious daily.  Thousands of Photoshop plugins are continually being developed.  Of course, disreputable photographers can distort photos into lies by photo editing, and we do have to be careful of that happening so we don't distrust the photos that we see.

At no time in the history of photography has the ability to record the stories of our days and lives been more possible and more exciting than it is today.  So get a digital camera if you don't already have a half dozen of them, get a computer if you've been too lazy to buy one, and share the stories of the lives of people you care about in a way that no one ever thought possible only a couple of decades ago.  A little competition should just make it possible for all of us to learn how to take better photos.  Commercial services such as Zenfolio and Smugmug, in addition to numerous others, are making it possible to share images in new and creative ways.  Photos are the images and stories of our lives.  Good or bad, we treasure them because we treasure the people and events recorded in them.

Old People Often Have a Tough Time Getting Through the Nights

One of the most common stories we hear around the friends and neighbors we live close to both here in Salt Lake and in St. George is the story of how much trouble old people have sleeping and getting through the night.  When you see them the next day, you would never know what a tortured night they just went through.  Every night is a new adventure, a new challenge.  People can't get comfortable in bed because they have pain from arthritis, spines, hips, knees, sciatica, and surgeries.  They have discomfort from Parkinson's, atrial fib, ventricular fib, diverticulitis, reactions to pills, and, as in my case, stuffy noses.  They have bothersome bladders and prostates. Some run noisy CPap machines for sleep apnea.  And some just can't sleep.  When one is approaching the end of one's mortality, the big "when, not if" question looms large, and most of us ignore it most of the time.  But reality explodes during nighttime restlessness and our minds wander, and we make great big things out of little tiny things, and we still have boogeymen in the closets of our youth and robbers just outside the window.

People worry about their next doctors' appointments, about the results of biopsy tests, blood tests, EKGs, EEGs, colonoscopies, endoscopies.  They worry about paying for dental implants and three-quarter crowns.  They worry about becoming an ultimate burden to their children or to others when they can no longer care for themselves.  And so the progression goes.  Initial retirement.  Subsequent illnesses.  Continued aging.  Hair thins or falls out all together.  Teeth get ever more rotten requiring monumental dental expenses.  Stomach deteriorates.  Hearts go ticky-tick.  Pains show up here and there, each of which, in the middle of the night is surely fatal and, as a matter of fact, some are.  The ambulance and the EMTs show up more often than we wish and the worry is "Am I next?"  People wonder how they can continue to endure the pain they are suffering through another day.

And yet, come the morning sun, the sleepless nights, the incessant cares and worries, the aches and pains seem more bearable, and we are ready to confront another day, to make the most of it, to see what we can do for others whose problems are far worse than others, to go about the daily routines of living, all continuing in a more hopeful light.  The issue gradually becomes not "How much are we suffering, how much must we endure" but becomes "How can I make the most of each day that I have left."

So old folks call their kids, looking for a word or two of cheer and support, just as we used to cheer them when crying from scraped and bloody knees and noses.  They read the morning papers, they often turn soon to the obits, they do their crossword puzzles, they go see the Ladies at the Pool, they go to the grocery store, many walking slowly and with canes and walkers, using the grocery cart as their support in the store, they check on their neighbors.  And many take naps.  Why can old people sleep during the day and not at night?  Women who still have husbands banter back and forth all day, completing each others' sentences, disputing each others' reports about when, how much, or who, asking each other "What was that movie we saw night before last?"  The widows live a more lonely existence, some of them perhaps having a more peaceful one, but still lonely with no one to tell how much they hurt, what they are afraid of, what they hope for.

Religion plays a bigger part in many old peoples' lives than it might have during the busy years of child rearing and working and running marathon schedules.  Faith comes front and center, along with reassurance and hope and the belief that it isn't how many days we live that matters, it's the quality of life during the days that we do live.  And somehow, I watch a feeling of peace, equanimity, and acceptance enter the attitudes of older people.  But all of that doesn't mask the fact that sometimes we are just scared as hell about what is happening to us.  Yet, if anyone asks us, we say "I'm just fine, thank you" and go about living the lives that God gave us.