I think not getting stuff until it happens to us is *normal*. You can be warned, you can be told, but you never know how you're going to react until it happens.
It doesn't have to be this way. You CAN internalize the things you're told and prepare yourself. Having spent a lifetime watching people get old, I have taken the warnings many of them gave without knowing.
For example, dealing with hearing loss. Just about everyone I've ever known dealt with the inevitable decline in their hearing by refusing to deal with it. "My hearing is fine!" they say, "You just talk too soft!" Having watched this countless times, I made a decision long ago to get hearing aids when the time came--which was last year when I went for a hearing test and found I'd suffered moderate hearing loss in some frequency ranges.
The warnings are there; the lessons are there. Take them to heart and plan on how you'll deal with them instead of waiting and trying to figure it out when it's actually happening to you.
My mother, sliding steadily into dementia, has been losing her hearing for the better part of two decades. You can hear her TV before you even get to the property line, and she's taken to complaining the the TV stations broadcast too softly. Sorry, mom--the TV volume only goes to 100!
If you remember Goodfellas, there's a character nicknamed "Johnny Two-times" because he says everything twice. I always figured that character got that habit from living with his nearly deaf parents because every conversation consists of saying something, getting the instant reply of "What?", and then having to repeat what you said.
BTW that also goes for dealing with the death of parents. If it's up to you to deal with their remains, be prepared. Make arrangements with a funeral home, or with a medical school if they want donate for research.
Roy, this is ugly/beautiful, and the ugliness doesn't detract from the beauty but enhances it. It's thin gruel to say many of us wish we had showed our parents more compassion -- I know I feel it. But they were our *parents* and it was hard to let go of the idea they were, however diminished, somehow still in charge.
Gee, this post is almost maybe triggering memories of last summer's procedure.
Usually, pain is forgotten by and by; the memory of the feeling as opposed to memory of what it felt. All I remember is the two [deleted for disgusting TMI].
As for that photo at the top of the post: I assume it's a knee but I'm not sure. Kind of looks like a pregnant belly though...?
My better half has had multiple spinal fusions and is in constant pain. She bears it better than most people I've ever known, but it's too easy for me to tune it out. Every so often, I get some Old Man's Ailment, or a vaccination reaction that puts me in the cheap seats. The Missus has enough empathy to commiserate, or at least humor me.
I usually remember to tell her, "No, this is a good thing. It gives me a small taste of what you deal with every day."
I just celebrated my 69th birthday. It wasn't nearly as fun as it sounded like it might be - To celebrate, I watched The Seventh Seal . I've watched it dozens of times. Anymore, I don't glean any fresh meaning from the serio-comic medieval horror story. The central conceit still makes me smile ( Max Von Sydow spends the film bitching about the God's silence and the lack of any proof in the supernatural. To Death personified.) Mostly, I look at the incredible Black colors in the cinematography. The beautiful faces. The perfect, seemingly casual arrangements of the objects within the frame. ( This time I noticed a black horse in the background of the wild strawberries scene - the one were von Sydow talks about how he would remember the moment for the rest of his life - Spoiler - he's dead by morning)
This time, I think I listened to the words more than I usually do. I took solace in the ending- death is going to happen, but it's OK - You just go dancing, dancing off over the hill with your companions. And I think, once you're over the hill you get to meet up with all your friends and family and dogs and cats ( and horses and mules) that crossed over the hill before.
Damn, Roy, that was one of the best explanations of what it feels like to be a patient that I’ve ever read. And you say you don’t care about your dead, but you bring your mother to life for us. Thank you for this. For once I have nothing snarky to say. Oh, fuck Ted Cruz!
My sister and I split caretaking duties for my poor mother for the last few years of her life - she would stay a month with me (and my saint of a wife) and then a month with my sister and her family. We had to do it this way or somebody would have went insane. She had a multitude of maladies as well as several surgeries that she was too stubborn to rehab properly, and on top of all of that she was almost completely blind from macular degeneration. One of her surgeries was to a shoulder and because she didn't properly care for it the shoulder would sometimes pop out of the socket. Rather than tell anyone when this happened, when nobody was around she would lay halfway on a table and let the arm dangle off the edge as she shifted around until it would pop back into place. I was furious with her when I finally caught her doing this, and then of course I would be filled with guilt for getting mad at her. She could be a tough old broad.
I was often like you were with your mother, stymied by the difficulty of having the mother who cared for me as a child be in a position where she needed the care, neither of us knowing quite how to act. But once I was watching her as she rested uneasily on our couch listening to the news and I was suddenly overwhelmed with both sadness for her suffering and love for her. I went over and laid next to her and took her in a careful embrace. She let out a huge sigh and relaxed in my arms. I quietly wept, and I'm trying not to right now thinking about this.
I didn't think so at the time, but those last few years were a gift.
Can't say I've learned much, but from the multiple friends who've had them, I've learned those knee operations are a bitch. The mother stuff got me choked up. I will take that feeling to my own 93-year-old mother, always a whiner, and truth be told, never a great mom, and give her a hug, no matter how annoying she is.
I lost my mom at 93. Never a great mom either, but she still had all her marbles, and I miss her just the same. After 90 or so, she said that every day she woke up was like a gift, and she expected that one day she simply wouldn't wake up. And then she was given an unexpected cancer diagnosis, and rather than undergo the brutal treatment it would have required, she decided to stop all food and medicine. The hospice nurses called her the Energizer Bunny because she held on for several weeks, primed for a fight with them every morning, a feisty harridan 'til the end.
By coincidence your knee recovery and the missteps is echoed in mine. I made the mistake of going for too rapid a rehab with exercise and it swelled up. I was already working on a cheap hip and core weakness issue. Suddenly the instability of old age and immobility, and chronic discomfort and unease were all looming large.
That's what I get for skipping leg day for months, or has it been years?
But like the alcoholic who one day discovers the secret (eureka! Not sobriety: Lite beer!), I found it on YouTube. All these folks with guidance for getting Rocky back in fighting shape after age 60 and into 80s and 90s.
The Internet is full of it. I can say that with a wink and a smile. Some good things, though, among the buy this now.
And I'm back to taking the stairs and walking. Little cheat exercises throughout the day. You'll get there. But take it slow, Daddy-O, and you can live it up and die with your boots on. On or off the can.
Get off the pain meds as quickly as you can, man. Good luck. Last word, your writing is the stuff that gives the aging solace. Let's all laugh our wobbly way to the next rest spot.
When my wife was battling cancer she had a drug store's worth of pain killers, most prominently delaudid and gabapentin. After she died I looked at all those drugs and wondered if I should keep them. I decided not to, and dumped them in a bin at a drug store. Lately, though, I've start to regret that. Just a little.
Gabapentin is a fucker. Feels like it helps. It does help, sorta, anxiety-wise. But it fogs the mind. Dilaudid otoh is wheeee! (Until the inevitable police shootout.)
"Fogs the mind" is right. It got so my wife got up in the middle of the night and did weird stuff, like putting a garlic bulb in a dish of uncooked oatmeal. When I saw that, I knew we'd crossed a line.
I, OTOH, am a big fan of demerol, which I was given when I woke up early one Sunday morning with a stomach pain that never stopped. BLISS, I tells ya.
Arrrgh, I'm so sorry. Bone pain and joint pain suck in ways that are impossible to describe to others, and then it happens to us and oh boy, do we ever get it. What occurs is, you realize that even with pain meds on board, you just can't get comfortable. Ever. And eventually, if the pain is just there, existing relentlessly, your brain does this interesting thing where it starts to visualize and compartmentalize the pain, as though it was an unwelcome fifth limb or else a giant, throbbing egg attached to you. And you begin doing things anyway--reading, writing, even cooking--only now, it's with these mean little jabs the whole while from your new body part "Oh hey, I'm still here LMAO you're not the badass you think you areeeeeee".
Rest-rest-rest, Roy. It's the only way through. My friend Michel, a retired hockey player, had a double knee replacement a few years ago, and because he's a hammerhead, he insisted on trying to move around and walk upstairs and do things *much too soon*. Of course he had a dreadful fall and they had to re-do the entire surgery on one of his knees.
So, please rest. And eat lots of pears and figs (which are coming into season).
And when your brain starts to compartmentalize, that's when the thought of "sawing this foot off can't POSSIBLY hurt worse" but thankfully you're too immobilized to actually go looking for the hacksaw. Or that's my experience, anyway.
Keep on healing! My 84 year old mom had her knee replaced last December (I do NOT recommend waiting until you're 84 years old to have knee replacement surgery) and she had a device for icing her leg.
You strap on a sort of pad that covers the afflicted area, and a pump distributes ice-cold water around your entire leg/knee as it sucks up and recirculates water from a bucket under the bed filled with water and ice packs. It's like a NASA space suit cooling thing, but it's available at healthcare supply stores and I don't think it was even that expensive. No condensation on your bed or leaky ice bags. Look into it.
I can second the ice water gizmo recommendation. The missus used one for a double fractured humerus. She got the shoulder version of this one: Breg Polar Care Cube Knee Cold Therapy Machine
Metamucil. Yes, it’s awful but not as awful as constipation.
My guitar playing buddy is still recovering from his second knee. I’d expected to hear from him this week based on how long it took him to spring back after the first knee. I’ll have to give him a call and rattle the bars of his cage. Hang in there, Roy. The worst of it is over.
More barbarian nonsensical ramblings:
I think not getting stuff until it happens to us is *normal*. You can be warned, you can be told, but you never know how you're going to react until it happens.
It doesn't have to be this way. You CAN internalize the things you're told and prepare yourself. Having spent a lifetime watching people get old, I have taken the warnings many of them gave without knowing.
For example, dealing with hearing loss. Just about everyone I've ever known dealt with the inevitable decline in their hearing by refusing to deal with it. "My hearing is fine!" they say, "You just talk too soft!" Having watched this countless times, I made a decision long ago to get hearing aids when the time came--which was last year when I went for a hearing test and found I'd suffered moderate hearing loss in some frequency ranges.
The warnings are there; the lessons are there. Take them to heart and plan on how you'll deal with them instead of waiting and trying to figure it out when it's actually happening to you.
As the Yardbirds once said, Mister, you're a better man than I.
What?
Joke. My hearing is bad too. Thanks for the reminder that the will is needed.
Standing in front of amplifiers for many years will do that.
Might could still hear the woofers, but the tweeters are just a memory.
My mother, sliding steadily into dementia, has been losing her hearing for the better part of two decades. You can hear her TV before you even get to the property line, and she's taken to complaining the the TV stations broadcast too softly. Sorry, mom--the TV volume only goes to 100!
If you remember Goodfellas, there's a character nicknamed "Johnny Two-times" because he says everything twice. I always figured that character got that habit from living with his nearly deaf parents because every conversation consists of saying something, getting the instant reply of "What?", and then having to repeat what you said.
Untreated hearing loss contributes to dementia.
Which was another factor that went into my decision to get hearing aids before I had to ask everyone to repeat everything,
BTW that also goes for dealing with the death of parents. If it's up to you to deal with their remains, be prepared. Make arrangements with a funeral home, or with a medical school if they want donate for research.
Needed this
Kneeded that
We're stuck in our individual grooves and the pains are part of the deal...but the post-realization hurts as well.
And it just now occurred to me that modern medicine has finally caught up with Colin Kaepernick.
At scale.
Roy, this is ugly/beautiful, and the ugliness doesn't detract from the beauty but enhances it. It's thin gruel to say many of us wish we had showed our parents more compassion -- I know I feel it. But they were our *parents* and it was hard to let go of the idea they were, however diminished, somehow still in charge.
i appreciate this very much, thanks. i resemble these remarks.
Gee, this post is almost maybe triggering memories of last summer's procedure.
Usually, pain is forgotten by and by; the memory of the feeling as opposed to memory of what it felt. All I remember is the two [deleted for disgusting TMI].
As for that photo at the top of the post: I assume it's a knee but I'm not sure. Kind of looks like a pregnant belly though...?
It's a ham.
It looks presidential!
Not orange enough
Cornelius Knee-Ham, our 48th President!
Edroso/Luigi 28
Enough with the Red-Blue, just vote for Ed-Lu!
Glad you’re back, Roy. I remember the first time I saw my mother as “old.” It was even tougher when I saw her in her last few months as a child.
My better half has had multiple spinal fusions and is in constant pain. She bears it better than most people I've ever known, but it's too easy for me to tune it out. Every so often, I get some Old Man's Ailment, or a vaccination reaction that puts me in the cheap seats. The Missus has enough empathy to commiserate, or at least humor me.
I usually remember to tell her, "No, this is a good thing. It gives me a small taste of what you deal with every day."
Bless her and bless you.
"Oh Mawma, he's great to me! He even takes off his boots before he climbs in the bed!"
"Sounds like a real catch, dear."
I appreciate your honesty - truly.
I just celebrated my 69th birthday. It wasn't nearly as fun as it sounded like it might be - To celebrate, I watched The Seventh Seal . I've watched it dozens of times. Anymore, I don't glean any fresh meaning from the serio-comic medieval horror story. The central conceit still makes me smile ( Max Von Sydow spends the film bitching about the God's silence and the lack of any proof in the supernatural. To Death personified.) Mostly, I look at the incredible Black colors in the cinematography. The beautiful faces. The perfect, seemingly casual arrangements of the objects within the frame. ( This time I noticed a black horse in the background of the wild strawberries scene - the one were von Sydow talks about how he would remember the moment for the rest of his life - Spoiler - he's dead by morning)
This time, I think I listened to the words more than I usually do. I took solace in the ending- death is going to happen, but it's OK - You just go dancing, dancing off over the hill with your companions. And I think, once you're over the hill you get to meet up with all your friends and family and dogs and cats ( and horses and mules) that crossed over the hill before.
"To celebrate, I watched The Seventh Seal " this is why we get along
And here we all thought it was the mule pics!
And Barncat.
Of course. Because cats rule the internet, and thus the world.
Damn, Roy, that was one of the best explanations of what it feels like to be a patient that I’ve ever read. And you say you don’t care about your dead, but you bring your mother to life for us. Thank you for this. For once I have nothing snarky to say. Oh, fuck Ted Cruz!
My sister and I split caretaking duties for my poor mother for the last few years of her life - she would stay a month with me (and my saint of a wife) and then a month with my sister and her family. We had to do it this way or somebody would have went insane. She had a multitude of maladies as well as several surgeries that she was too stubborn to rehab properly, and on top of all of that she was almost completely blind from macular degeneration. One of her surgeries was to a shoulder and because she didn't properly care for it the shoulder would sometimes pop out of the socket. Rather than tell anyone when this happened, when nobody was around she would lay halfway on a table and let the arm dangle off the edge as she shifted around until it would pop back into place. I was furious with her when I finally caught her doing this, and then of course I would be filled with guilt for getting mad at her. She could be a tough old broad.
I was often like you were with your mother, stymied by the difficulty of having the mother who cared for me as a child be in a position where she needed the care, neither of us knowing quite how to act. But once I was watching her as she rested uneasily on our couch listening to the news and I was suddenly overwhelmed with both sadness for her suffering and love for her. I went over and laid next to her and took her in a careful embrace. She let out a huge sigh and relaxed in my arms. I quietly wept, and I'm trying not to right now thinking about this.
I didn't think so at the time, but those last few years were a gift.
Getting old is a bitch. I hope you heal up soon!
Can't say I've learned much, but from the multiple friends who've had them, I've learned those knee operations are a bitch. The mother stuff got me choked up. I will take that feeling to my own 93-year-old mother, always a whiner, and truth be told, never a great mom, and give her a hug, no matter how annoying she is.
I lost my mom at 93. Never a great mom either, but she still had all her marbles, and I miss her just the same. After 90 or so, she said that every day she woke up was like a gift, and she expected that one day she simply wouldn't wake up. And then she was given an unexpected cancer diagnosis, and rather than undergo the brutal treatment it would have required, she decided to stop all food and medicine. The hospice nurses called her the Energizer Bunny because she held on for several weeks, primed for a fight with them every morning, a feisty harridan 'til the end.
By coincidence your knee recovery and the missteps is echoed in mine. I made the mistake of going for too rapid a rehab with exercise and it swelled up. I was already working on a cheap hip and core weakness issue. Suddenly the instability of old age and immobility, and chronic discomfort and unease were all looming large.
That's what I get for skipping leg day for months, or has it been years?
But like the alcoholic who one day discovers the secret (eureka! Not sobriety: Lite beer!), I found it on YouTube. All these folks with guidance for getting Rocky back in fighting shape after age 60 and into 80s and 90s.
The Internet is full of it. I can say that with a wink and a smile. Some good things, though, among the buy this now.
And I'm back to taking the stairs and walking. Little cheat exercises throughout the day. You'll get there. But take it slow, Daddy-O, and you can live it up and die with your boots on. On or off the can.
Get off the pain meds as quickly as you can, man. Good luck. Last word, your writing is the stuff that gives the aging solace. Let's all laugh our wobbly way to the next rest spot.
"That's what I get for skipping leg day for months" leg day is a MYTH I am convinced
Pick your myth: Hydra or Phoenix, robust or antifragile...or waiting for the ax?
Tucson!
Tucson? Haven't heard that story. Rising from the spindrift sands, the lands of Ozymandias?
Don't remember Ozy (barely remember Harriet), but my quest this fall will be to rise from Babad Do'ag to the top of the Lemon!
2 marks for Daddy-O
He's quoting "Cool" from West Side Story.
I'm hip!
They do not call Dilaudid "hospital heroin" for nothing. 😂
Oh man. I'd be happy to go out that way.
When my wife was battling cancer she had a drug store's worth of pain killers, most prominently delaudid and gabapentin. After she died I looked at all those drugs and wondered if I should keep them. I decided not to, and dumped them in a bin at a drug store. Lately, though, I've start to regret that. Just a little.
Gabapentin is a fucker. Feels like it helps. It does help, sorta, anxiety-wise. But it fogs the mind. Dilaudid otoh is wheeee! (Until the inevitable police shootout.)
"Fogs the mind" is right. It got so my wife got up in the middle of the night and did weird stuff, like putting a garlic bulb in a dish of uncooked oatmeal. When I saw that, I knew we'd crossed a line.
I, OTOH, am a big fan of demerol, which I was given when I woke up early one Sunday morning with a stomach pain that never stopped. BLISS, I tells ya.
Arrrgh, I'm so sorry. Bone pain and joint pain suck in ways that are impossible to describe to others, and then it happens to us and oh boy, do we ever get it. What occurs is, you realize that even with pain meds on board, you just can't get comfortable. Ever. And eventually, if the pain is just there, existing relentlessly, your brain does this interesting thing where it starts to visualize and compartmentalize the pain, as though it was an unwelcome fifth limb or else a giant, throbbing egg attached to you. And you begin doing things anyway--reading, writing, even cooking--only now, it's with these mean little jabs the whole while from your new body part "Oh hey, I'm still here LMAO you're not the badass you think you areeeeeee".
Rest-rest-rest, Roy. It's the only way through. My friend Michel, a retired hockey player, had a double knee replacement a few years ago, and because he's a hammerhead, he insisted on trying to move around and walk upstairs and do things *much too soon*. Of course he had a dreadful fall and they had to re-do the entire surgery on one of his knees.
So, please rest. And eat lots of pears and figs (which are coming into season).
And when your brain starts to compartmentalize, that's when the thought of "sawing this foot off can't POSSIBLY hurt worse" but thankfully you're too immobilized to actually go looking for the hacksaw. Or that's my experience, anyway.
Compartmentalize is right. It's like trying to match the right ice pack to the right pain.
"Of course he had a dreadful fall and they had to re-do the entire surgery on one of his knees." oh god
"It's like trying to match the right ice pack to the right pain."
When the ice skates YOU it's time to reconsider that Selchow.
Keep on healing! My 84 year old mom had her knee replaced last December (I do NOT recommend waiting until you're 84 years old to have knee replacement surgery) and she had a device for icing her leg.
You strap on a sort of pad that covers the afflicted area, and a pump distributes ice-cold water around your entire leg/knee as it sucks up and recirculates water from a bucket under the bed filled with water and ice packs. It's like a NASA space suit cooling thing, but it's available at healthcare supply stores and I don't think it was even that expensive. No condensation on your bed or leaky ice bags. Look into it.
Corny, but: Best Wishes!
I can second the ice water gizmo recommendation. The missus used one for a double fractured humerus. She got the shoulder version of this one: Breg Polar Care Cube Knee Cold Therapy Machine
Yes, Mr. Grey had one of those icing machines, and it helped.
Metamucil. Yes, it’s awful but not as awful as constipation.
My guitar playing buddy is still recovering from his second knee. I’d expected to hear from him this week based on how long it took him to spring back after the first knee. I’ll have to give him a call and rattle the bars of his cage. Hang in there, Roy. The worst of it is over.
I recommend Metamucil just for everyday regularity. It makes a biiig difference.