arthritis

An Undeniably Senior Observation

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It isn’t fair, but as we age things get difficult. We know this intrinsically, but I have proof: A Google Watch connected to a Fitbit App on my Samsung Smartphone. Out of curiosity, I stopped the google watch one time after monitoring my calories lifting weights, running, or swimming. Then I restarted it for showering, drying, dressing, and walking to the car. The result? More calories were burned after workouts while getting dressed than when lifting thousands* of pounds or swimming scores* of laps. Odd. But when you consider the “Activities of Daily Living” (ADLs) and “The Instrumental Activities of Daily Living”(IADLs)** the reason getting dressed burns more aclories than the workout becomes obvious: difficult things like lifting weights are still difficult, but easy things—like putting on pants—have become very, very difficult. I’m working out hard, now, to get in good enough shape to put on my pants!

The first thought was The Calamities were responsible. Arthritis, for example, made putting on socks an adventure in stretching, tugging, and twisting leaving me breathless after just one foot, and needing a short break before attacking the other. (No, the “assistive devices” on the internet were not helpful, except for the addictive “Reacher”, as chronicled earlier.) And the drive home is usually with socks twisted and bunched inside my slip-on shoes because there was no longer a desire to see just how fast my heart could beat. Google “orthostatic imbalance”.

Pants. Let’s talk about pants and their*** sadistic cousin, the swimsuit. The Calamities made dressing standing up next to impossible. Think about it, healthy people: putting one leg at a time into pants or a swimsuit while upright. Even putting either on while sitting is an exercise in hope, combined with several side-shifts, strategic tugs, and covering the sitting surface with a towel that has a life of its own. Getting pants off is a breeze until you have to pick them up off the floor. Same with a wet swimsuit, and you always hope the floor is clean. Aren’t they all in fitness centers? To summarize: off go the pants, on goes the swimsuit. Stop for breath, Go swim. Return from workout and off goes the swimsuit and on go the pants. And unless it’s summer, The Socks, too. (Capitalized for effect.)

It doesn’t help to have odd-shaped feet and fast-growing toenails. My feet (and hands) are tapered and are beautiful in their form, slanting down to each side from a higher, central middle digit. Very pleasing to look at, but when trying to slip such a foot into a pant leg or the genital sling of a swimsuit, that taper guides fabric right to the small toe, where no amount of trimming can keep a nail from growing just enough to catch that fabric and require a formally athletic and aerobically fit male to have to bend and tug and hope the fabric will release in time to prevent a stroke. Again: orthostatic imbalance.

Wow. Look at this post. Whine, much? I’m not sure how so much time and typing got wasted on dressing but for some reason I feel better about life, as if letting the world know how hard it is to get pants on makes my life so much easier. Cathartic posting?

The need to whine is over. The Calamities have been pretty much tamed and their return or advancement is not anticipated. Most of the arthritis was surgically removed and replaced with titanium and something akin to Teflon. So…when will life return to normal, with easy on and easy off attire?

Is there any reader out there over 70 years old who knows the answer? There’s no surgery that can help old age. No drugs to stop it in its tracks.

It appears the last 3 years have been a blessing in disguise, then, as my settling into old age “normalcy” is way better than dealing with those dastardly afflictions. I’m ready for anything life can do, now.

Yes, my glass is half-full. What about yours?

And since this venting felt so good, get ready for the next post where you will learn about the effects Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) can have on your digestive system. IGRT is an Ai guided procedure performed by a linear particle accelerator and you will read a harrowing tale of focused sub-atomic star-wars beams, loose stool, tattoos, unexpected gas, and…cliffhanger!

*Really? Thousands and scores? The mind…

** If you’re wondering about getting older, or are old already old and wondering what’s happening to you, google these two, ADL and IADL

*** Apology for the needless anthropomorphism. It’s a fun word and concept.

Random Ramblings of No Regard***

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Bad news followed by good news on the medical front these past 30 days. Went from possible colon cancer after failed Cologuard test and subsequent “polypy”(sic) colonoscopy, to happy, clear pathology report 30 days after the whole mess started. I’ll never get those days back.

Then a routine dentist appointment yielded a “bump” in the sinus area above the teeth. Referral to a specialist had me waiting a week, but then 3d-imaging and sinus x-rays had the specialist wondering “Why are you here?”, a saying much more evocative than the “di rigor” (It’s Italian. Google it. Expand your linguistic horizon.) “you’re okay”, especially if you’ve already googled “sinus lump” and its strange, dangerous possibilities. Oh, it was the root end of my tooth. Normal bump. I mean, it should have been, but I’m not a dentist, so…Both false alarms had threatened the June 18th removal of the last defective hip. The final removal of the last of arthritis is on schedule. Until some more of the Big A visits. So the Big C and the Big A will only need watching after June. Discussions with like-wise afflicted cohorts have helped make the decision if anything else happens, no more treatments. Let it be.

The Trump-Musk feud is fun to watch until you consider how serious the issues are for all of us. Commenting on either is unnecessary but I will make this statement: Watch out for Big Tech. Specifically, our data in the hands of Big Tech. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. never delete records. There is a current conspiracy buzzing around a company called Palantir and what it plans to do with all the data “collected by DOGE” when DOGE went into the IRS, Social Security, and other government agency’s data banks, and “handed” the data to third parties like Palantir. They will know everything, so says the conspiracy.

And Ai WILL end the world as we know it. You can see Ai and its devil offspring, algorithms, being used already to torment us in Customer Service and Financial Services. When was the last time you called your credit union, bank, or credit card company’s “customer service” number and got a live, human being, even after the phone tree?** As an Aging Man, I’ve noticed the algorithms are even better at aggravation than real people, and getting an apartment, car loan, home, loan at age 73, by myself, is nearly impossible. Ai even makes it impossible to get a person to explain why. So get ready,

And if Ai puts a lot of people out of work, what will they do?  So glad I’ve aged out of that particular worry.

Reason has revealed I am the cause of the unusually terrible weather upstate NY has suffered since my return. Unprecented weather with tornadoes and a once-in-a-50-year snowfall winter “seemed” to have followed me here. My bad. But I will not assume any contribution to how bad NY sports teams are. We’re talking Championships, now, not regular season. The Bill’s fan motto is now “win one in my lifetime” which is really a question, not a hope. The Yankees had won at least one World Series in every decade of their existence. My moving probably coast them the 2010s, but the 2020  failures are their own. Jets. Ha. Orangemen? Eh. Giants? Nooooo. Knicks? Ugh and ughier(sic). Nothing really is expected of the Nets, but the Rangers last Cup win was over 30 years ago with the last appearance in the Cup finals 10 years and counting. This can’t be all my fault. The Bill’s were good but not good enough when I lived here and have resumed being The Big Tease in NY sports.. For my son-in-law’s sake the Bills better answer that motto question…and soon. And not in the negative…again…

Mets were purposely omitted: they stole Soto, so…

This post went the way of life these days. Medical questions being dismissed or answered and treated allows the mind to randomly ramble and wonder about…

S%*$. I missed Nap time.

** And when you do, do they do anything but repeat what the algorithm says?

*** Selected this title because Ai says it is “terribly clunky and redundant.” It made my day.

Hello, miss me?

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I’ve tried not to talk too much about The Calamities which have visited me these last 20 months, but what happened recently deserves noting.

Cancer, AMD, arthritis, and now anemia, caused by cancer treatments make up The Calamities. Of the four, The Big A, arthritis was the biggest pain in my arse(sic), and just about every joint, but especially in my left hip. It was the companion who went with me everywhere, to the tests, and treatments and recovery for all the other Calamities. Arthritis was with me every minute of every day for the last 20-some months. It even slept with me. When I rang the bell at the end of radiation, I had to limp up to the ringer.

Slowly we knocked the others off. We beat cancer, so far. We stopped AMD, so far, and anemia is being tracked, ready for elimination. But The Big A treatment required surgery, something we couldn’t do until the body could take it. Curing The Big C came first.

December 6th, 2024 the body was ready. At the sparkling Apex facility on Route 233 near Westmoreland, NY, I entered the Star Wars of medical care at 6:30am. Every single person from Doctor to receptionist was not only friendly, but treated me as if I were King Charles, or whoever is the big deal in England these day. Questions were answered, treatments were explained, hands were held, and flirting with nurses was allowed (so my daughter says).

Somewhere there is a record of the exact moment I came out from under anesthesia, but all I know, all I care about, all I celebrate, is the moment of the final, complete extermination of my painful companion. A “thing” that had dogged me, disabled me, and caused life to be severely limited…was gone. There was a picture in my mind of Dr. Wickline throwing my old hip bones into a red, medical waste bin, gone forever, to the cheers of his staff.

It’s safe to assume surgical drugs helped my post-op euphoria, but I knew the difference. And even when those drugs wore off and “NORMAL” surgical pain presented itself in the following days, it still felt painless, liberating, and rejuvenating. There was a new life to live…with out The Big A.

It helped that Dr. Wickline not only prepared me for all that was to happen, but he put it in a book so I could read and follow along, knowing all the time exactly what MIGHT happen, all the while hoping very little of it did. Dr. Wickline’s books, and his employees, and the Apex people, made the experience of gaining a new lease on life a real adventure, an enjoyable surgery, and thanks to all of them for getting me through it.

The days of recovery are saturated with noticing and analyzing pains and swellings, and bruising and possible nerve issues. All of which were in the book, and were already being treated by the “Recovery Drug” protocols outlined. Now, on my 12th recovery day, my only real problem is keeping my self from jumping with joy (Watch those sutures!) at the freedom and promise of new life, with both, now, my every day companions.

One last thing, if you are man my age, and you remember when coaches told you to “throw some dirt on it”, take notice of those pains, and modulate them or fix them before its too late. Don’t be so manly. I should have replaced the hip years ago.

Oh, and for fun: if I hadn’t gone to the doctor for The Big A in February 2023, I may not have caught the other Calamities in time to cure them. Think about it old men, and women. Get to the doctors. Now.