wellness

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, My Ass

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Shakespeare* wrote those words–except for “My Ass”– hundreds of years ago when a well-known, porcine-related character discussed death with himself. It is a profound, deep-meaning soliloquy with oft-quoted-out-of-context short and long sentences with clauses, semi-colons, and dramatic commas resulting in an excellent rant about Existence and the The End**.

Modern American Seniors have their own opinions, however, on what The Bard of Avon was really referring to: actual loss of sleep. It is odd how William makes “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” seem so dramatic when all we really hear is there is too much going on to get some, good, solid, long-time sleep. There are no “slings and arrows” flying across our bedrooms*** but there is a lot of cerebral activity. So much activity the poor brain stands as if in the doorway of the bedroom, ready to flick the light switch off but…can’t..do…it.

A thought racing across our brain cells IS sometimes the knowledge we can put ourselves “to sleep perchance to dream” in a very real and permanent way but we’re just not ready yet, so…

Instead we ponder the Cognitive Impairment conundrum: how it creeps up on us and when we have it, we won’t know, even as we wonder who put our car keys in the produce drawer of the refrigerator.

Or we wonder why we feel so good but still can’t generate enough interest in a late dinner at our favorite restaurant to get us out of our favorite chair.

And is there anyone who will listen to us and invent easy-on, easy-off socks?

Even worse: is there anyone who will listen to us at all?

The night then becomes a debate between…what was I talking about?

Oh, yes, how hard it is to sleep the good sleep, anymore. Most nights start well, even when the Yankees lose. But after the first few hours of sleep, when the first bathroom “break” wakes us with an unnecessary urgency, and shortly after we check the refrigerator for the perfect, healthy snack that won’t harm our brushed teeth or sensitive digestion system, it is the re-falling back asleep that fails, utterly****.

After the many nights this happens it is clearly no longer about slings and arrows or The End, but a thought all its own that consumes one: will I ever get back to sleep? The question is accompanied by the close observation and analysis of anything that comes to mind from the macro, like our current high inflation, to the micro: will I be warm enough without socks?

Running out pf space, as usual, but when your own brain becomes your own sleep disrupter…well, I never remember that happening as a young man.

Hmm. Is that because of a bad memory, it never happened, or Cognitive Decline?

Let me sleep on it.

*Probably. Or he may not have. Or someone else did. A guy named Bacon. Or an alien.

**Most Americans probably can recite this speech by simply muttering every short, trite saying they’ve heard about Shakespeare. To be or not to be. Whether tis nobler.  To sleep, etc…oh, and “the tyranny of life”.

***Or any of the other areas we may try to get (eye) closure.

****Wonderfully guttural word. And, yes, that is how I found my keys.

*****In upstate NY the temperatures change fast. A semi-nude, 80 degree outside sleep session can be sadly ended when the toes warn your body the early-morning outside temperature has dropped to 60. Socks, again?

My Two Brains

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For many years, now I’ve wondered if there are two brains in the body. You, too?

My vacation to the Warm South was meant to be a break from the Winter North, but also to test hopefully repaired, rejuvenated, and reclaimed physical abilities. It was during this testing, the “proof” of my second brain was finally revealed.

There have always been internal conversations–such as the infinitely confusing argument between doing good or doing bad–but I assumed those discussions were a normal personality abnormality, simple sophistry inspired by too much Devil’s Advocacy during young, formative years. It would go away with time and maturity, and the accumulation of wisdom. But the second brain discovered in North Carolina last week is different, it actually-,better tell the discovery story, first.

Sometime in the mid-morning hours of Thursday, March 27, 2025, I was in a Happy Place: a public tennis court surrounded by tennis players my own age. It was a time to celebrate recovery, patience, and give the beleaguered medical corporate establishment some credit for good work. The early moments were a time full of insults, name-calling, trash-talking, and too many hugs, all of which were greatly appreciated. Sadly, the second brain discovery happened only moments after actual physical activity was perpetrated. Yes, perpetrated. Perfect word for what happened. Look it up.

A now ex-friend hit a soon to be outlawed (hopefully) shot called a “Drop Shot”. For the un-tennis among you, the Drop Shot is a nasty trick played on mature, semi-immobile tennis players by younger, fully mobile tennis players. Given the abundance of gray hair and joint braces this morning, there was no expectation any one of us would ever have to face such a nasty play. I felt especially free from worry as I was recovering, attempting to resurrect my game, and open to any special treatment benefiting my progress. In a later post we will discuss whether or not there is honor among septuagenarians. (Full disclosure, it was our groups lone octogenarian who hit the shot, so I’ve no legal basis for claim, if so inclined.)

The beginning of the unappreciated drop shot was quickly seen by my Big Skull Brain (BSB), and  BSB immediately broadcast the signal to the entire body to move forward at a rapid pace to get to the falling tennis ball before it hit the ground. Perfect. Just right. So far.

But the next thing to hit the ground was me. The “ground”, by the way, in public tennis courts is painted concrete.

If you are at all familiar with the saying “got out over the ends of my skies”, then no more explanation is needed. For the rest of you, as my BSB issued commands, some other, smaller brain not only cancelled those commands, but did it with prejudice. As I lay writhing on the ground/concrete watching the yellow ball bounce next to my skinned knee, a comment between my BSB and the other, smaller brain was overheard. It went like this: “Move? Hell, no. We ain’t going nowhere.”

And thus a mystery was solved: we do have two brains. At least I do. A naïve, uninformed person may say the smaller brain is located in the penis of a male and it is hard to argue they’d be wrong. We will not attempt to locate the female smaller brain or even make the argument the females are equipped with one. Utter discretion. And maybe one is all they need, anyway

That NC morning’s facts are: one brain said “go” and the other said “no”. My big skull appeared to follow BSB’s directive and moved forward. Parts of the upper body followed, but reluctantly, as if the debate between big and small brain was already happening and non-brain parts were confused about which command to follow. The penis theory might be right because the lower parts followed the small brain directive and pretty much stayed in the same spot, leaving my big skull, and upper trunk to accept gravity’s invitation and topple over, risking major injury if no more action was taken. Fortunately, some sort of “emergency” system (a THIRD brain??) kicked in and my arms extended to absorb most of the impact. The upper body rescued itself and rolled over, saving the heart and lungs for later abuse.

It’s as if the small brain was punished for its incalcitrant (sic) actions as most of the medical carnage was done to knees and lower extremities. Take that, small brain. Aside: why do skinned knees take so long to heal?

You can understand how hurt BSB was, but it did a masterful job of pretending not to be hurt and graciously accepted every ounce of empathy.

It was a distracted drive home with the constant stream of debate between brains. I tried not to listen but did hear the word “insurrection” more than once.

The one, major positive about aging is the things you learn about yourself. One positive, now is—with a second brain—all the bad things done in the past are not entirely my fault…are they?

Some bad things?

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It is a curse to be self-aware, especially if you don’t know it.

The title refers to things about myself that I don’t notice. They get put in a pile, get forgotten (really: ignored) and then sooner or later, they get addressed. It is later, now.

I don’t really mind other drivers: it’s the yelling at life, I like. You “no-signalling turners” and “stop-at-yield-sign” drivers are not as irritating as you might think. They simply “release the hounds” of profanity. Since it happens in an empty car, with the windows rolled up, there is deniability built in if the other driver chases me down and has a Glock.

Things fall all around me for no reason, making me pick them up. I curse them with the common lament of the persecuted: “Why me?” It does help when other people my age say they feel the same. It doesn’t end the feeling of persecution, though, and I might rather enjoy that, too. (See above paragraph.)

When things are going good for me, I make the mistake of saying out loud a phrase that acts as a trigger and ruins the mood. Can anyone guess what the phrase is? It is the universal wail of the optimist who is skeptical: “Something bad’s gonna happen, soon.”

My life (which is probably at least similar to yours) is comprised of different moods, and I feel like wearing an apology sign for all those who get in my way when I’m in my Bad Mood (BM…please don’t confuse it with doody.) In a BM a slow clerk is the End of the World, and society is coming apart. In a BM the slightest grammatical error, the slightest slight from a public servant, the lack of efficiency of a waitress makes me start planning an underground bunker with lots of frozen pizzas.

But in a Good Mood (GM, no not the car company), those events listed, above, make me smile, and wonder what the future holds for the guilty person. At the grocery store this morning, I used a real person for checkout since there was only one man in front of me with a small order. But when it came time to pay, that’s when he took out his voluminous wallet and started counting out bills, and then change. Oddly, I felt the line growing behind me more than I felt the usual annoyance of being slowed down, AND I felt sorry for the old gentleman. What is happening to me????

Here’s another Bad Thing. I feel so good this morning I wrote a nasty, “let’s end things” text to the woman who screwed me over this past summer. As a good, decent man I had been trying to save a 21 year relationship but suddenly decided to believe–and act on–what my friends liked to say about her: “She is a cruel, selfish bitch.” Oddly, sending the “close the door on all possibility” text made me feel better.

I do not look my age. Two doctors this week, alone, who had not read my file yet, accused me of being “Mid-50 years old”. One last month thought my 50-year-old daughter was my wife. You probably can’t see the problem, so I’ll explain: I look too young for woman my age, but am factually too old for women the age I look like. If you’re married or in a committed relationship you won’t understand. But try and imagine being a 72-year male back on the market, back on the prowl. I tried a dating site for a few days but stopped because it took too long to prove the profile picture was recent. One “lady” (the quotation marks will be explained in the next sentence) asked for a pic of my birth certificate. With hindsight, she was probably a Nigerian Romance Scammer. Maybe I should have just lied and looked for younger women. Imagine, too, a 72 year-old woman being “accosted” by a 55 year old man asking for a date. (No, I have not encountered any Cougars in Upstate NY, they all moved to Florida.)

It’s too bad a GM can’t just be enjoyed. And a BM ignored. But it is much better to be alive and aware, than lost in The Calamities and eternal doom. A close, younger friend just learned he needs a pacemaker. The news saddened me at first, but then the news sidled up next to what the worst could be and life got back to balance for him, and for me as an accessory to the fact.

With all the bad that can happen, balance is heaven.

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.