Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Thoughts On My Birthday

 I suppose that everyone, as they 'get up there' in age, wonder on their birthdays if they will reach their next one.

I am optimistic. I suppose I am 'tempting Providence' to say that I expect that I will make it for at least another year. Life expectancy at 88--my age this birthday--is about five years, but that average includes a percentage of people who are already facing serious health problems.

Yes..I have a pacemaker--but that has been ticking away for well over twelve years. "Don't need an EKG," said my doctor the last time I saw him: 'your heart sounds fine.'

Some worries about the prostate, but the urologist's verdict recently was "no sign of malignancy.'

And so--reaching 88--I cross my fingers and feel reasonably optimistic that I will make it through to 89.

More worries about the possibilities of developing Alzheimers or plain old senile dementia. Increasingly, I am afflicted by nominal aphasia. Some times embarrassingly so. Last night, sheltering from the rain under a bus shelter, while we waited for an Uber, the word "Uber" must have been mentioned a dozen times. But when I started a sentence to make some comment and needed the word "Uber," it just wasn't there, and my sentence tailed off in embarrassment as someone else supplied me with the word. Sometimes, doing a crossword, I see what the word is, but by the time I reach for my pencil, I have lost it...

But--finally--let me admit that the thought of death, while by no means uppermost my mind, does seem to be with me more and more as they years go by.  And the thought is not so much when it will happen, but how? Months of suffering with stomach cancer? Or a quiet heart attack in my sleep?

Stop it, David. Post what you have written and send the URL to Dan and John....






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