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From Sassy to Gassy
Is there a month dedicated to senior citizens’ concerns about their future? I’m sure there is. It probably hides behind some elderly-centric health issues month. Whatever, I woke up today thinking my life is pretty good. While drinking my morning coffee and doing a few of “those” word games I did, however, think about dementia and Alzheimer’s. And I know those issues aren’t exclusively a senior’s concern, but I wondered, “Would I know if I had either dementia or Alzheimer’s?” If someone I know and love thought I might have either, would they tell me? If they told me, would I believe them? Am I okay if I’m a bit forgetful? Because I’m basically a retired person and it’s sorta, kinda easy to forget which day it is. Occasionally LOML and I will do something that would have been a very Saturday thing to do, but we do it on a Wednesday and for a split second I’m thinking “it’s Saturday”. Let’s face it, though, if you’re retired every day is Saturday. Right? I hope I’m right.
So, on whatever day last week I decided to tidy up the yard, I was raking and thinking about how a lot of our friends are about our age and how they must be thinking about the “what ifs” of being old, too. We’re mostly seventy and eighty somethings. A whole lot of our friends have had, or are awaiting “parts replacements”. I don’t have enough fingers or toes to count the number of people we know who are having, or have had, knee replacements, hip replacements and cataract surgery. I’m sure there are other parts that can be replaced, but my memory doesn’t always serve me well in that regard. And I get it, parts wear out. All mechanical parts have a best-before date. When it’s time for a “parts replacement” it’s the hips, the knees and the eyes that give you the most very obvious hints that things might not be quite right. Physical pain is always a good indicator of a problem somewhere. Although I haven’t had any of the boney parts replaced I have had one cataract surgery. One of the other signs of aging, which I’ve noticed, is my appetite isn’t as robust as it was in my younger days. My cast iron constitution seems to be rusting away. These days I can’t imagine washing down a bag of Spicy Doritos™ with a couple of beers and then heading to bed for the night. Nope. I can hardly eat a meal after seven in the evening without being fully prepared to sleep propped-up, knowing there could be a couple of visits to the “boom-boom room” as the chips hit the fan. And I’m living all of those times I snickered about my parents eating their dinner at four-thirty in the afternoon. LOML and I aren’t quite at the four-thirty mark, but we’re in the back stretch in that race.
Seriously, my biggest concern isn’t hips, knees or vision. My biggest fear is dementia. What part can be replaced to fix dementia? What if one of us develops dementia? He and I know the top indicators of dementia are: difficulty concentrating; finding it hard to carry out familiar daily tasks; and struggling to follow a conversation or find the right words. Speaking for myself, I have all of those indicators but probably wouldn’t if I didn’t try to read a book, watch something on Tubi and scroll through the inter-webs at the same time. Of course I find it difficult to carry out daily tasks, but mostly because I fell like I have better things to do than wash the baseboards, put my clean laundry away, tidy the pantry and dust around the door frames. Am I able to find the right word and follow a conversation? Well, sometimes the words I find are the right words for my purposes, but not everyone wants to hear the words I’ve chosen to use. Yep, I can still follow a conversation, but mostly I can’t be bothered with “splainers”, narcissists, oneuppers and whiners. As soon as they start up I shut down. However, if the conversation is about food, books, museums or camping I’m right into it and as articulate as Noam Chomsky.
Growing old is better than the alternative, or so LOML keeps telling me. I just don’t like how quickly I went from being a sassy twenty-something in the seventies to being a gassy seventy-something in the twenties. Geez!
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