Category: Aging

Posted on in Aging, Family, medical treatment

Yep, Been Not Writing!

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Remember when we took that lovely boat ride and saw those tremendous whales, seals and birds? The next day I got violent vertigo. No signs or symptoms while on the boat. Had been boats before. Rats! This may kill my wish for at least one cruise before I depart the earth!! The illness was like riding the tilt-a-whirl unwillingly! I never did enjoy amusement park rides.

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The worst sensation was as if I were lying flat and then like a board, my feet were rising over my head.  Eventually I was diagnosed with two types of vertigo that required medication and then physical therapy to reset crystals in my inner ear….right side. I never even knew I HAD crystals in my inner ear! Did you?

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So they flipped me back with my head turned to one side, therapist holding my head.  My eyes felt as if they were spinning like the fruit on a slot machine. I gripped the table in fear that I would fall off it. When the spinning stopped, the therapist moved my head to another position and had me hold that for a time. Then yet another head position. Then eventually I sat up on the sie of the exam table. My husband was uncertain if this was a treatment or just smoke and mirrors.

The first treatment  I gradually felt worse for 18 hours. It set me back a week and I had to walk in our house with a cane for a full day. Did not seem like progress! I was staggering and stumbling and decided I could not return to California for our second trip which would require lots of walking and no rental car. I had to sleep elevated on two pillows. Not allowed to lie on my right side to sleep. Did lots of resting. Not supposed to look up or down. Made sitting at the sewing machine a no go. Headaches, dizziness, increased weakness – NOT A HAPPY WOMAN.

Second treatment only set me back about 1-1/2 days. Third treatment I was fine. So weird. Husband a believer!

Yep, I missed a few days writing, but hey! Saturday November 3 I drove for the first time since October 10th. I made a new friend who was my shower sitter (present in the house while I took a shower when Bob was out-of-town). A neighbor provided a ride to church while Bob was gone. I met a new PT group where I will return if this ever flares up again.

We may never know if I actually had an inner ear infection, too. At least someone knew HOW to correct this awful experience.

 

Posted on in Aging, Traveling

Radical Acceptance

… is just another way to say yield.

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Sometimes I have to create my own object lessons with Sculpey clay. Not always professional looking, but seriously mine!

On our recent vacation I developed terrible Vertigo, the type that landed me in Urgent Care getting drugs for the symptoms. Over one week later I am still waiting for the symptoms to be healed. This is a very hard lesson in radical acceptance. Vertigo is like losing total control over your life. No balance, no ability to just “get over it”, no cure in sight. At least not nauseated any more. Waiting for 2 weeks to get into physical therapist who specializes in resetting the crystals of the inner ear. I never even knew I HAD crystals in my inner ear! If I carry a crystal and sleep with it will I be healed before then?

So yielding to my current condition is tough. But then again, what choice do I have? Fight and flail and kick against it and I am just likely to fall down. If I did not have a headache already, then exercises the internist gave me to perform induce one. Yep, I assert once again that growing old is NOT for sissies!

 

Posted on in Aging, Book quotes

Aging

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Someone sent this to us a few years ago. We are getting closer to resembling this remark!

I recently read Madeline L’Engle’s book A Severed Wasp.

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She wrote “She might feel like a young woman in an old body, but there was no denying that the body was old, and she had little patience with people who could not face their own aging. She had had a full, rich life – surely that should be enough.”

I know a woman who moans and complains constantly about her aging and her loneliness and her misery. No one wants to spend time with her. I certainly have little patience with her. Having struggled with a chronic pain condition for years that is not progressive, but still has the power to make me miserable gives me yep “little patience with those who can not face their own aging.” When Bob was still working, he went into one man’s hospital room to draw the man’s blood. Asking the man how he was doing that day, the man replied “Well, I woke up on the right side of the grass!”

Every person we meet is broken. Some hide it better than others, but each of us is dying and aging. To me, becoming an old geezer with joy and acceptance is better than moaning my way into my grave!

I have a calligraphy with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. He said,

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, CHOCOLATE in one hand, beer in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”

And yeah, that would be DARK chocolate please!