"Old Age"

A friend asked me the other day how it feels to be "my age."    

I guess he knew I'd just cracked through another major birthday hurdle and this must have triggered his curiosity.  The same sort of curiosity I see on the face of those archeologists on TV when they uncover a particularly interesting artifact.  The same look you see on the faces of entomologists as they prepare to stick a pin through a lepidoptera.  

"How do I feel," you ask?  I feel just fine, thank you," I said.  

"Well, except for the standard aches and pains of those who are three score-plus.  And in my case, since I've gone through four spinal-fusion surgeries, I have an additional set of places to hurt.  As my doctor says, I've been fused "From a*shole to appetite."  Funny, that guy.

In addition to making it difficult to pick up anything off the floor smaller than a $20.00, I have some extra aches and pains that ordinary, near-octegenarians thankfully don't yet possess.  

Oh, and my ulcer, did I mention that?  It acts up every now and again and makes life a living hell!  Imagine having a raging hole in your stomach which nothing, apparently, can fix?  The trusty bottle of Ensure I down every morn coats the old tummy, fortunately, so I can stagger through life.  That and hefty doses of medicines with long, expensive names.  They help a lot also.  

Yeah, and that terminal neurological ailment my doctor tells me I have.  It's terminal, he assures me, he just cannot tell me when the guy with the scythe will show up.  It's been "terminal," I might mention, since I received my diagnosis more than two years ago, and it's still "terminal" today.  It's sort of like being told by your pilot that you're on final to your destination to the "terminal," and you'll be descending from 30,000 feet shortly.  Except you don't know the altitude of your destination airport.  Is it in Lhasa Apso, Tibet?  At 18,500 feet, in which case I'll be dead by Spring?  Or is it Oklahoma City, at 1,100 feet, in which case I can expect to live maybe until the next General Election?

Please God, I pray.  

It's kind of like hearing that a major storm is expected, but you don't know when it'll be showing up.  You have to keep your bags packed, though, just in case.  I was a Boy Scout.  "Be Prepared," was our motto.  God, I sure try to be.  And God, I sure try to be...  

Annnd, let us not forget my bi-lateral polyneuropathy.  Those are $3 words for "Burning, tingling, loss of feeling and numbness associated with severe neurological impairment," in both legs, below the knees.  That just means it's always like your legs are just waking up from falling asleep and it's naggingly painful.  You sometimes want to stab yourself with an icepick.    

Yeah, problematic, to be sure.

And because of the continual, nagging pain I'm forced to take heavy-duty painkillers.  The ones that our Gubmint tells us everybody in Kentucky has died from.  Except I'm one of the folks who actually have to take them or go postal in the extreme.  I actually have to go visit a pain doctor every single month so that he can verify that I'm still alive and in pain, and that I still need to keep on taking these dangerous, addictive, awful drugs.  Can you say demeaning? 

However, as I said to my friend who asked the other day, "I feel just fine!  Thanks so much for asking!"