If you need help separating HELPFUL STRATEGIES AND LESS HELPFUL, Ammo Grrrll has a few thoughts. She writes:
The other night a few of our best friends in our Gated Geezerville sat down around a cozy firepit to eat, drink, laugh, and commiserate. It had been a tough summer for the three of us idiots who elected to stay in the aptly named Valley of the Stupid Sun for the entire summer. The Winter People were back from the Northern climes where they still maintained their other homes and the Summerers were back from the higher elevations of Arizona.
Some wag has said that there are three stages of Man: Youth, Middle Age, and “You look fabulous!” And indeed, we all assured each other that we still do look at least great, if not entirely fabulous. We probably looked better last year before three of the parties involved got cataract surgery and can see a lot more clearly now.
Topics ranged from politics, of course, to health, to the summers we had had, to health, to the new Thai takeout place in town, to health, and when the second bottle of champagne was near empty, to a brief discussion of several incidences in which we had seen animals having sex in zoos. Then there was a desperate request from a couple of the ladies to return to the topic of health or pretty much anything else.
Except for one youngster who just turned 60 all of us are in our late 70s or early 80s. Most of us are “pretty healthy …for our age” (Baruch Hashem, praise God) which is a lot like saying, “Biden is not particularly crooked…for a politician.”
At this writing nobody is in a wheelchair or even using a cane. We have among us bike riders, pickle ball players, very good golfers, one guy who jogs so slowly it should probably be called “wogging” as a cross between walking and jogging. And one unnecessarily short walker who her taller walking partner calls “the anchor” because of how much she slows him down.
Many of us have taken at least one fall that COULD have been far more serious than it was embarrassing and we are all convinced that one way to stay healthy going forward is to stay on our damn feet! However, unless you plan to just sit for the rest of your life wrapped in bubble wrap, only having sponge baths — never baths or showers — your risk is never going to be zero. Life, my friends, is a marathon through a minefield.
A couple of my falls have been totally explainable: Heading for the Palm Springs UPS store, I was carrying a big box that blocked my sightlines – clever! — and I did not see the corner of the wooden planter that I clipped and went flying. I do wish that I had had a video of that one because I think I could have won a prize in America’s Funniest Home Videos. My knees locked and I dropped the box and staggered Frankenstein-like for quite a distance before finally pitching forward on my hands and knees, all the while convinced that I could somehow find my balance again and salvage the situation.
But the last big fall was just totally out of the blue. One minute I was up and the next after a nano-second of inattention I was down! It still haunts me.
My late great Mama took at least three terrible falls well into her 80s, but she weighed about 92 pounds, so she never even got a sprain, let alone a broken bone. Still, in her mid-90s, it was a fall off the back of her walker that signaled the beginning of the end. So, commenters, friends and dear readers, no falling, okay? Just knock it off, capisce?
Nobody in our firepit group is yet ready for Memory Care, though our memories are mostly on Dial-Up rather than High Speed. We KNOW a lot of stuff – especially collectively — and, if given enough time to come up with a historical date, a movie star’s name or a Super Bowl winner, we can blurt it out eventually even if the conversation has already moved on considerably. Sometimes to recall a name, an incident, it takes several people hollering out clues like a Pictionary team. None of us is quite as far gone as the gentleman in one of my favorite jokes:
A group of friends are drinking wine before dinner, the ladies in the kitchen, the men in the living room. One of the men tells his friends that they really enjoyed a good, inexpensive meal at a restaurant in a town up the road. He can’t quite remember the name and starts asking for help.
“Yeah, that’s the one”, – hollers into kitchen, “Rose! What was the name of that restaurant we liked?”
Slightly over half of us have had COVID and are still here. Three people who were all vaxxed to the max have never had it, although several of their relatives who were equally vaxxed have had it multiple times. We also know two couples who never took the jab at all who also have never had it. So, really, who knows? I doubt we will ever sort through all the mis- and deliberate disinformation in what was certainly one of the crimes of the century. And there will be no consequences for the lies, the “gain of function” disaster, the nursing home disgraces, and so forth. But back to the lovely pleasant evening.
One guy takes not one single prescription drug, so he may not be invited to join us going forward. The rest of us are on blood pressure pills at a minimum. The young woman is “pre-hypertensive” and trying to avoid having to get on the pills, which ALL have side effects and downsides. Since I have been on blood pressure meds for decades, I have tried to give her some sage advice.
1. It is important to find strategies to dial down stress. Here, your husband can play an important role. Saying, “You just sit here with a nice hot cup of Chamomile Tea, honey, while I load the dishwasher,” is an example of how to lower stress. Saying any variation of “Calm down. Settle down. Snap out of it” is less helpful and can lead to your spouse attaching her latest target from the Tactical Range to the fridge while wearing an apron featuring a woman cutting up carrots and the simple statement, “I have a knife.”
2. Watching the news is very bad for blood pressure. Declare a “news fast” where you just sit in front of the telly tuned to YouTube videos of repetitive violin or piano music played under slow-moving pictures of birds, water, or rural scenes of horses, silos and barns. Very relaxing. All the bad stuff will still be there when you return to the world in a couple of months. And Christmas with all its attendant stress – shopping, cooking, tree trimming, gift-giving – will be over. Bonus: you probably won’t have to send Christmas cards next year either because the friends you failed to send to this year have already purged you from THEIR lists.
3. Yoga is very helpful. Before assuming any position, make sure there is someone in the house who can help you get back up. Or at least get you out of the Full Lotus Position.
4. Put Beet Powder in your smoothies. I have no idea why — I just read it somewhere. What could it hurt? It makes everything a pretty pink unless there’s also spinach in there, in which case it turns an unappealing khaki color. Drink it anyway. Just close your eyes.
Finally, my advice to anybody for anything is to HAVE A LOT OF GREAT FRIENDS. Even better if they are FUNNY friends so you laugh a lot. I honestly do not know how we would have gotten through the last four years without them. And many of you know who you are. God Bless you, every one.