Doing Something, or Okay Enough

One of the crazy parts of aging is recognizing what happens with bodies – all of ours,

and then, trying to figure out What to Do About the Problem.

Now, every single day (really) someone calls up with a Body Story. Mostly this never

happened before. But I wasn’t old before either.

Peter has a kidney stone now. Although you can get kidney stones when you’re

younger too, it seems one of those aging things. He’s not in pain (he was a while ago)

but he’s doing what most of us do when we find out we HAVE SOMETHING. He

talked to his doctor, and then, he began googling. Googling can be confusing. (Most

doctors tell you not to google, but googling is in the Doing Something Camp.) On

Monday he’ll see a kidney stone urologist. When he googled him (Dr. Gupta at Mt.

Sinai) he found the doctor to be a 5 star expert. That’s an example of a Good Googling.

There are bad googling experiences too.

FYI when my blood test showed I had a Vitamin D deficiency

I googled what that could mean,, Essentially it means I don’t get enough Vitamin D. (I

take a supplement now.) But it could be an indicator of this and that. My doctor said

don’t worry. She also advised me not to google. How can you not?

Also, there’s an endless use now of the word Procedure, an unlikeable word. More

gentle, maybe, than surgery, but still. There are so many possible procedures that can

happen. Our good friend Thea had a back procedure yesterday. Back procedures seem

to be run of the mill.

Vivian had her gall bladder removed in an emergency on Monday. What cheered her

up (which will give you an idea if how crazy all this is) is this: the doctor came unto

her room afterwards to say that it was the worst gall bladder he’d ever seen. She said

he was an older man, and she took that as a surprising compliment.

Betty had an A-Fib ablation last week. A while ago I’d never heard of A-Fib, or

ablatations either and now I know half a dozen people who have had this procedure.

Another part of aging I see in women more than men is the busyness of running away

from aging. Many of my friends (I’m in this camp too) are always Doing Something -

frantically going here and there – another country, an urgent drink date, a visit to a

museum, a can’t miss demonstration. My experience of men, in a highly subjective

survey of friends, is that most men don’t do that. Retired, they might take a class or

two but they seem more self-contained. Doing something they love like playing the

piano or taking photographs.

It seems to me that women – not all of us, but some anyway, are more social creatures.

Endlessly making arrangements, scheduling, texting, trying hard to fix things, do

things. But not everything is fixable, especially now.

A wise doctor friend said something a few weeks ago that I’ve been thinking about

ever since. He said that doctors want to believe what patients want to believe too: that

there are always Things To Do To Make Things Better – medicines, acupuncture,

physical therapy, Chinese medicine. Some things work of course, but then there are

some circumstances we just can’t fix. He said that gerontologists are focused on

quality of life, and helping us recognize that not everything can be fixed.

For those of us oriented to always do something, this is not an easy lesson.

Although I don’t have the temperament to be a Buddhist, maybe I should take a

course just to see.