This ole house is a-gettin’ shaky,
This ole house is a-gettin’ old,
This ole house lets in the rain,
This ole house lets in the cold.
Oh his knees are a-gettin’ chilly
But he feels no fear or pain
‘Cause he sees an angel peekin’
Through a broken window-pane.
---Stuart Hamblen
Exploding Head Syndrome. It smarts.
Is There A Doctor In The House?
Not any more, but theres a passel of ‘em on The Schedule. When we were kids, the medicos made house visits, their eminent vehicles sporting green crosses on the license plates, society’s imprimatur to park anywhere they had the inclination. Most of the time, however, we visited their bustling offices in downtown Lawrence for the dreaded “checkup,” which involved getting a large, flat wooden stick shoved down your throat, then being poked hither and yon with a pudgy finger, leading up to the grande finale---a jab or two with a ferocious needle. Then, if you were lucky and they hadn’t run short, a lollipop. It hardly seemed like a fair trade, especially with the one-hour wait in an anteroom filled with coughing, gagging imps run amok, turning over chairs, beating on their brothers and sisters and creating a state of high dudgeon in their beleaguered mothers, whose only weapon was an impotent “Jimmy, wait til your father hears about this!” Yawn.
As we got older, doctor visits fell by the wayside. Between the ages of 30-55, about the only physicians I ever saw were the docs who helped me recover from those jolly trips to Mexico. Other ailments, some of them debilitating, I simply waited out like most of the other males of the era. If doctors were an afterthought, hospitals might as well have been on another planet. The only time we resorted to those was when errant friends needed deliverance from ODs. We almost took Stuart Bentler to Alachua General the first time he dropped acid and insisted on medical intervention because he was “going crazy.” Stuart relented, though, when we reminded him he was crazy in the first place.
Now, of course, zipping through our seventies on the Marrakesh Express, the medical profession plays a major part in our daily existence. Scarcely a month passes when some form of doctoring is not required. We have allergists to help battle the outrageous pollen counts, dermatology practitioners to whack off or freeze deteriorating flesh, cardiology wizards to monitor that aging ticker, gastroenterologists to rectify the consequences of our terrible diets and GPs to check our blood, write the prescriptions and keep all the balls in the air. This doesn’t even take into account the specialists for such inconveniences as Porphyria, Necrotizing Fasciitis or Exploding Head Syndrome, nor the peripheral heath professionals involved with dentistry, chiropractic, massage or colonic (gulp) irrigation. Sometimes, there aren’t enough days in the week. And then, of course, everyone is his own best doctor, reading up on suspect illnesses on PubMed, comparing medical notes with brethren at the gym, scouring the ever-expanding list of promising new cure-alls on Facebook. It’s a full-time job, this personal health care, as 70-year-old bodies find interesting new ways to cause trouble. Savvy investigative measures are required. Is that a horrendous melanoma or merely a piddling squamous cell? Should I up my resveratrol with another glass of wine or stick to the boring supplements? Will HGH pull me back from the brink or push me over the cliff? Should I listen to Doctor Oz or Doctor Strangelove? There’s no end to the dilemma and no night classes to bring us up to date. All we can do is all we can do. In times like this, it’s important to remember the words of the fabled metaphysicist R.C. Crumb: “Keep on truckin'.” Inscribe it on your doilies if that helps.
The Eyes Have It
In faraway China, this is The Year of The Dog. The Chinese regard Fido as an auspicious animal, a good friend who can understand the human spirit and obey its master whatever his conditions. If a dog happens to come to a house, it symbolizes the coming of fortune. The invincible God Erland used a wolfhound to help him capture monsters. We discussed this monster-hunting with our dog, Lila, the other day and she ran into the closet.
In North Central Florida, of course, we have no monsters, except for Ted Yoho. In NCF, it is The Year of The Eyeball, the one with the cataract in it. Cararact surgery---everyone’s doing it. At first, I thought they were just trying to be chic but then I incurred the problem myself, and I am only chic when they give donuts out as prizes for chicery. In the past year alone, cataracts have been removed from my own eyes and those of my gym pal Gail, from Donna the Bakery Queen, from Siobhan’s lead employee Julie, from Gainesville Socialist artist Nancy Kay, and those are just the ones who aren’t stalling. Are the planets out of alignment? Is there something foul in the Florida air besmirching our precious lenses? And what’s next---an eardrum blight?
Cataracts aren’t the only eye problem around here. Siobhan has a terrible ocular condition which sneaks up on her at night when she’s sleeping and glues her inner eyelid to her eyball. When she wakes up in the morning, she has to tear the eyelid loose and squirt gallons of liquid pacifier in there to soothe the savage beast. If there is a cure for this horrible condition, we haven’t found it yet. We could, of course, remove the eyelid, but Siobhan would then require a patch and she has a lifelong animosity towards pirates. Every year on Gasparilla Festival Day, she lays a wreath at the door of our local Marine Recruiting Station. If anyone else has had this condition and solved the problem, please let us know. A successful remedy will earn the submitter an all-expenses-paid trip either to the Halls of Montezuma or the Shores of Tripoli.
Colonic Irrigation: Hope for the future.
Breaking The Seventies Barrier
It’s really a wonder anyone makes it to eighty, let alone the century mark. You need a combination of good genes and pure luck more than anything else. A good diet, exercise, abstinence from drugs and alcohol are all fine unless you have an overlarge heart, a grouchy pancreas or lumpy breasts. I have friends and acquaintances in good health who rolled their cars into a ditch and passed into oblivion; when I did the same thing, I got a little cut up. Meanwhile, there are alcoholic chain-smokers and lifetime drug-doers out there on the cusp of eighty still battling on. I can list a half-dozen one-time addicts and drug peddlers right now who have gone on to long lives with minimal problems. (Don’t worry, Steve, I won’t.) Good genes and luck, the vital difference.
That said, everyone’s chances are improved with the usual suspects mentioned above. It stands to reason that the items the average person ingests into his body are critical. “Crap in---crap out” is a reliable prediction, despite the occasional outlier. Kazillions of studies have clearly established there is almost noone who will not benefit largely from exercise. Smoking and excess alcohol intake are proven killers. A yearly blood draw with interpretation by your G.P. will often head off trouble at the pass. The point being that despite the requirement for good genes and luck, the main determinant of your own fate is you. The Cosmic Arbiter has passed you the baton you carry into your seventies. Whether you trip and fall over an untied shoelace or reach the next hurdle is largely up to you and the allies you elect to enlist for the balance of the race. Choose wisely, tread carefully, and we’ll see you at the next roundup. Otherwise, give our regards to Mr. Rogers.
Alternative Medicine
If a 77-year-old man is going to battle with The Scythewielder, he needs all the troops he can assemble. In my case, I have a GP, a cardio team, an allergist, a dermatology clinic, a urology surgeon, a medical lab, a dentist, a chiropractor, a massage therapist, five maids a-milking and a partridge in a prune tree. And I’m pretty healthy, with a mere two prescription drugs. Some people open the medical cabinet and are buried under an avalanche of pills. On the medical front, however, there’s always room for another ally, even if it’s a medico some consider sketchy.
About six weeks ago, I began to feel pins and needles in my hands while watching TV at night. Around the same time, I started getting an itchy red rash on various parts of my body. PubMed told me the tingling sensation could be a prelude to diabetes or carpal tunnel, but recent blood results cancelled out the former and the lack of pain negated the latter. My GP told me to use Ivory soap in the shower and take the little Bounce critters out of the laundry. I did these things to no avail. Nobody had any satisfactory answers so I decided to go over to the Dark Side. I called Dr. Mariana, mistress of Naturopathy, Acupuncture, Herbs, Homeopathy and Colonic Irrigation. Don’t worry---nobody was going to convince me pins and needles and a blotchy rash could be cured by a colon intervention. Siobhan, of course, pooh-poohed all this as a big waste of time but she didn’t have any answers either. When you’ve got nothin’, you’ve got nothin’ to lose, so I went to see Dr. Mariana in her little office in Gainesville. It was nice.
The doctor is Eastern European, probably Bulgarian since she has a for-real medical degree from the University of Sofia. She listened for twenty minutes and pored over recent blood results while I recited my medical history. Then she looked up and said, “I can fix you. You’ll be fine.” See, that’s what I like in a doctor, lawyer or Indian chief. Positivity. “You’ll be fine.” Of course I will.
I laid on a table while Dr. Mariana inserted acupuncture needles, mostly in my lower left leg, but also my right hand and left ear. That’s right---ear. Then she swung an ultraviolet light about twelve inches over my stomach. The light, she said, was to “charge your batteries.” Okay, God knows it had been a long time since my batteries were charged. Then she left the room for twenty minutes while I was repaired. Almost instantly, my right hand began to hurt, I could barely move my fingers. I had a pager for unexpected crises but I decided to wait awhile and see what happened. After about five minutes, the pain diminished and the hand felt looser than usual. When twenty minutes had passed, Dr. Mariana came back in, put me on my stomach and rearranged the needles. After fifteen more minutes with the UV light, she came back in to assess the situation, then gave me shots of vitamins B-6 and B-12. She also dispensed a small container of homeopathic pills designed to quell the rash. Then, she promised I’d get better and moved on to save the next patient. On my way to the car, I was a little disappointed that I didn’t feel the buoyant jolt of energy I usually got from a B-12 injection. The ever-scornful Siobhan had assured me earlier that if I felt better it would be merely a psychosomatic reaction. I didn’t feel better, so I guess I’m not psychosomatically disposed. I felt worse. I couldn’t imagine how bad it would have been without the B-12 shot.
Next morning, same thing. Very fatigued, worn-out feeling. I Googled “tired after acupuncture” and was advised that my body was basically coming to grips with the treatment. I might feel this way for three days before the big rebound. Fortunately, it only took 24 hours. Later that afternoon, I felt great. I took my homeopathic meds and the rash went away. I told my pal John Cinney at the gym about the instant cure. He had a year-long rash worse than mine. He took the pills and his symptoms disappeared immediately. Siobhan, who doesn’t believe in any of this, was last seen telling Julie her own rash-suffering husband ought to try the stuff.
One day later, the pins and needles were gone. I felt a slight recurrence after about a week, but the sensation was much diminished. It hasn’t returned since. I called Dr. Mariana to give her the good news. She asked if I wanted to continue treatment. I don’t know what that means but I said sure. I don’t think the doctor can cure cancer or Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, but perhaps she can deal with some of the unpredictable insults which assault septuagenarians and confound their regular doctors. At any rate, she’s earned her place on the team. Hell, she’s currently Player of the Month.
That’s all, folks….
