IS IT OLD AGE?

I’ve been lax. I usually write at night, but I haven’t been up to it lately. It may be a bug of some sort. I am not down in my bed groaning sick, I just feel yucky. That’s a very specific medical term. I have fallen asleep watching TV and lose my place in my book when reading. I had already learned that TV was a sedative. My dad loved baseball and years ago would turn on a Saturday ball game and he drop off like a light. It now works for me when I want to sleep. But these have been unintentional.

My doctor is trying to get me to stop blaming everything on age. I may be too accepting, but little things that happen get neglected. They just don’t seem important. I’m content with the aging process, but some of it may not be due to aging.

My left foot bothers me from time to time. It has always been shorter than the right leg — a birth defect. In 1996 the left foot really bothered me. I was playing racket ball often at the time and would come home to soak my foot and limb badly the next day. My doctor referred me to a neurologist to determine what was wrong. He ran a little wheel with needles on the rim over parts of my leg and foot and learned I don’t have a lot of feeling there. I could have told him that.

I was having trouble with my 1966 burgundy Ford Fairlane 500 with genuine imitation leather seats on an extremely cold winter Regina day. I took it downtown to leave it for repairs. There was a bus stop right across the street so I waited to catch the bus home. I am not sure how cold it was, maybe 100 below or 200 below. All I really remember is that it was too cold to stand around. I started walking along the bus route back to the campus. I was sure a bus would come soon. No it didn’t. I got all the way back to college and never saw a bus. My feet were ice. The school nurse said I had some frostbite in my left foot. The feeling was less from then on.

So one leg is short, it has some dead spots and it is hurting mildly at time. The neurologist said that the binding at the bottom of my spinal cord was tipped and pulling my leg up. Great, what do we do? Well, they could have fixed that before you turned 16, but it’s too late now. Thanks for the info. I asked if he was sure it could have been fixed in 1958. Oh, no. They didn’t know how yet. Thanks for the info. I guess I will just keep on living with it. The leg usually never bothered me. It was noticeable when I would get tired as I limped more. Eventually, that pain just went away. Who knows why.

As I age, the leg doesn’t hurt but the foot rolls over. I have inserts but probably need new ones. Great. I can’t believe the cost of just trying to hold myself together. It is easier, and cheaper, to just fall apart. I am well into the phasing out stage. We call he Home our second to the last stop. Convalescence is next. That’s not so bad. Naturally I would like to do it without much pain, but we don’t always get what we want. I don’t consider myself a fatalist, but a realist. I have no knowledge of anyone who has skipped the death stage except for those two guys in the Old Testament. That’s OK. I don’t mind. My turn will come, as will yours. I will live with what I must and attempt to repair what I can (afford) and give myself over to this phase of life. It is fun in it’s own way. I laugh a lot.