Aging for the Unaware

Aging has been a surprise, a bonus, a door prize for not dying. It hasn’t been painless, and it wasn’t always easy. But, I can’t really take any credit for it. Oh, sure, I kept breathing, but I don’t remember ever actively exercising my right to breathe, it just happened, like most of my life, I didn’t really have any input. I’m still sitting in the audience. 

I was supposed to have a colonoscopy a couple of years ago, one of those humiliating, uncomfortable preventative procedures that are supposed to help doctors help you stay alive. But, they couldn’t perform the procedure, I had an irregular heartbeat, atrial fibrillation, and that was enough to cancel their plans. 

There was no colonoscopy that day, but I had to go to the emergency room, out of the frying pan…

Emergency rooms are strange places, with winding hallways and strange rooms, with shabby, rundown curtains, to keep everybody from watching them take blood, and record a persons vitals. Most of the time I was an innocent bystander, a detached observer. 

As the morning gave way to the afternoon, nothing changed in the emergency room, I was laying in an uncomfortable bed, with wires and machines attached to my chest, and an IV needle taped to my arm. It was a monotony, a drab, colorless box, with no entrance or exit, it was a world that existed independent of reality, apart, separate from the colors, scenery and diversity of the university campus surrounding the building. Just outside the bleak walls was a Panera Bagels, Buckeye Donuts, Apollo’s Greek Kitchen (since closed), myriad fast food shops, coffee kiosks, and small, delightful cafes. And I was stuck in a room, in a maze, trapped by nursed, doctors, orderlies and wandering, armed security guards. I was starving, I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since supper the night before. 

Hours became abstract, an ancient method used to measure the passages of life. Time didn’t change in the emergency room. Every minute was the same as the one just passed. Light didn’t travel, it just sat, gloomy, puddling around the stern, uncaring fixtures, and sparse, mean furniture. 

It was almost a pleasant distraction when a nurse, or doctor would pull thecurtain aside and step into the room. Anything was an improvement. But, they would ask a few questions, look at one of the machines and type out something on the omnipotent computer, and just that quickly they were gone. I was left with my poor wife, sitting politely in a barely tolerable chair, and  O. Henry, whose short stories were almost perfect in such a bizarre setting. 

Eventually, they sent me home with a turkey sandwich, a cup of coffee, and three new prescriptions, two medicines designed to regulate my heart rhythm, a blood thinner and the solemn, serious, scary advice, “Don’t get in a car accident.” 

Since then I’ve gone in and out atrial fibrillation, they warned me it might/could/would happen, and I’ve had four cardioversion’s and two atrial ablations. I feel good, I’ve felt good the whole time. But, they tell me a lot of people who live through this suffer from sour effects, dizziness, exhaustion, shortness of breath, so I consider myself lucky. At the same time I consider myself cursed.

For the first time in my life I am left facing my own doom, feeling the end closing in. Sure, there were moments where the I feared the final curtain may have been dropping. A robbery in a liquor store, a collapsing construction scaffold, a half dozen drug and alcohol fueled extravaganzas, but they passed, and I was comfortable in my immortality again. Perhaps, more so from the narrow, and absolutely cowardly display of self preservation I could exhibit. 

Now, I watch commercials for ailments that prey on old people. Eye diseases, heart diseases, stomach, liver, lung, blood, and all the attachments and supporting pieces and parts are wearing out. There is an ache that I can’t feel, it’s a sense, a worry, waiting for the right moment to announce itself. 

My sister made me a cross-stitch, with a turtle laying on it’s back, the inscription read, “If I’d known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself.” I look at that, and I wonder if I would have been smart enough. I doubt it, I was having fun, and I never would have believed I would be walking through my 66th year with a resting heart rate of 46 BPM and a “29.7% double support time.” I’m a victim of my own success, and the hearty genetics of my immigrant grandparents. 

If you’ve found yourself on the other side of the spectrum, I toast your health, and if you have any advice on dealing with the trials of aging, please let me know.