YAAW - Yet Another Aging Woman

Falling off the Edge

A daughter of longtime friends recently birthed a beautiful baby boy, and she and her spouse are happily engaged in rearing their much loved child. She writes that, being a parent, she feels pulled in two directions – imagining the future, and as opposite, being totally involved in the day.

Here’s what I remember. I remember sitting at the edge of my bed, holding a baby, my first, in my arms.

He was born via C-section, after 24 hours of non-productive, Pitocin-induced labor. He wore a small, knit cap in his bassinet, although he lived with me in a private room. After leaving the hospital, we took him each day to let the technicians stab his foot in search of a blood sample, monitoring his jaundice. We put him to bathe naked in sunlight to reduce same. We charted his weight gain (steady, but under par).

I was exhausted. And I continued in a sleep-deprived state for some while. We made adjustments. I took naps when the baby slept. Friends helped us move. The birth caught us by surprise – we weren’t even packed! We settled in our new house with our days-old infant, into the high-ceilinged master suite with garden tub and French doors, into the spacious open floor plan of the public rooms.

It was late afternoon. Outside the sun shone, birds sang, our dogs prowled the yard.  The house was quiet, the baby and I the only inhabitants. He had fallen asleep while nursing. I gently pried him from my breast. He lay heavy in my arms. And in that moment, sitting at the edge of the bed, cradling my sleeping child, something inside me shifted.

 For this small scrap of humanity, this tiny being, I would do anything – fight, bite, kick, scream, lie … kill. This small someone, this beloved child – mine, fiercely mine.

 I know there are mothers for whom this moment does not arrive. But for most of us it does, either in an instant or in small increments that build a cradle of love around a child, our children. That day, I fell off the edge, into the Sea of Motherlove. With the next child, it was a gentle immersion, but I knew it waited for me … and for him.

Tweaking the Quilt

Like my next oldest sister, a sign of order in my day is a neatly made-up bed. Thanks to that same sister I have lovely, lovely quilts that grace said bed. This month the quilt is a Pansy Park, accessorized with a variety of decorative pillows strewn across the top. The Pansy Park is a orderly, symmetrical pattern, and the borders exactly fit my queen-sized mattress. And therein lies the rub.

It is important to me that the margin of green at the left and right sides of the bed are the same. It is also important that the tail covers the end of the mattress, but that's pretty easy. It's the left-right thing that's hardest to get right.

Hubby is a good man. Most mornings he either makes the bed or helps me make it. Of course I can't "let well enough alone", as my mother used to say. I have to tweak and tug until the quilt is lined up just so and the pillows are piled to my satisfaction. Hubby just shrugs and looks the other way. He is, by now, used to my foibles.

I wonder if, in my old age, I'm showing symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? This bed-making thing, for example. We spent three months traveling, living in hotels and hostels. These places have people who are paid to make the beds. I know that. Still, each morning, I pulled up the bed coverings and straightened a bit. I stopped short of tucking things in and plumping the pillows, but it was hard, hard.

Your cue: laugh now. The rest of this piece isn't so happy.

I poke about a bit in the tubes of the Internets. I am intrigued to find that the typical onset ages for OCD are quite young. According to one website most symptoms emerge between ages 10 and 12 (early onset) or between 18 and 23 (late onset). Another website states that males manifest symptoms earlier (between ages 6 and 15) than women (ages 20 to 30). The Stanford University Medical School OCD site states :

  "OCD usually begins before age 25 years and often in childhood or adolescence. In individuals
  seeking treatment, the mean age of onset appears to be somewhat earlier in men than women."

and then goes on to cite a series of studies and statistics. This same site examines prevalence figures: one can draw the conclusion that in the U.S., OCD affects 1.6% of the population, give or take 0.2%. Other sites state that OCD affects between 2% and 3% of the U.S. population. What's more, the Stanford site also states:

    "Patients with OCD are at high risk of having comorbid (co-existing) major depression and other anxiety disorders."

The good news is that I'm certain I don't fit the clinical profile for OCD. Certainly nothing in my childhood, early adulthood or current life meets the Stanford website's standard:

    "To be considered clinically significant, the obsessions or compulsions must cause significant distress or interfere with the person's social or role functioning and must occupy more than an hour per day."

I conclude that I just have more time these days to notice the small, everyday things, like whether the quilt is exactly centered on my bed. That occupies maybe 30 seconds of my day, between planning the days activities and deciding what I'll have for breakfast.

The bad news is that so many people are affected by this disorder, that it is most probably under-diagnosed and mis-diagnosed, and the treatment deficit is abysmal. Odds are that you know someone with OCD. I do, maybe more than one. But I don't think I ever really thought about what their lives are really like before today.

You Know You're Getting Old When ...

There is a multitude of ways to finish that sentence. My latest discovery is that, after painting a couple of rooms in our house, my hips hurt. Yes, hips. Not calves, not thighs, not knees. Clearly I don't do enough stair climbing, but it isn't a natural movement in a one-story house in a (mostly) one-story town. (Note to self: include StairMaster in gym routine).

I'm not kidding about the one-story town. It was a big deal when the city fathers built our two-story City Hall, familiarly tagged as "The Taj Ma-Hall". It was an adventure for our young boys to climb the stairs to the second floor and ride the elevator down. Yes, I know, City Hall is not a playground, but ...

As I detest painting anyway, I have been dragging feet on this long-needed job for months. Hubby got a bee in his bonnet and did all the texturing we needed to do before painting. He did a lot of taping and disassembly of fixtures in the bathroom we painted. So it was either live in chaos with furniture in the middle of the room and my Toto Washlet out of action, or paint.

Armed with my favorite 1-1/2" brush, a trim roller, and frog tape, I did the trim painting in both rooms first. Three windows, baseboards, corners, behind the toilet, around the shower stall and the ceiling lights. Ugh. It took hours.

In contrast, finishing up with the big roller went quickly. And fortunately, since we chose to stick with the same neutral wall color, only one coast was needed.

So while my mind was idle and my hands were busy, this little ditty assembled itself in the back of my mind:

Painting the Wall

Rise up with dawn
Put old clothes on
Hip, Hip, Hurray
It's PAINTING DAY

Load up the brush
Oh what a rush
Mind the ceiling
WHAT A FEELING!

(...And a short while later)

Muscles sore
Oh what a chore
At any rate
The wall looks great

Drip here, drip there
Wipe up with care
Don't leave a smear
I need a beer

Up step and down
Brings on a frown
My hips will pay
Tomorrow day

(...and, finally, I remember why I hate painting)

My shoulder aches
My hair has flakes
The tape has stuck
That surely sucks

The last stroke won
I've still not done
It all must be
Cleaned up you see

Tools clean and bright
All put to rights
All back in place
Leaving no trace

OF ALL THE WORK I'VE DONE!

(Remind me, next time to take before-and-after pictures.)

Dying by Inches

My oldest sister, Audray, is dying. For the record, she's 77 years old and was given a preliminary diagnosis of lung cancer more than a year ago, after she collapsed on the street and was taken by ambulance to the local emergency room. She is a life-long cigarette smoker. Audray refused further diagnosis and treatment, and enrolled in hospice care in the small mountain town in Appalachia where she retired almost 20 years. She has a living will and a power of attorney for health care, but so far she's judged competent to make her own decisions and to live on her own in her own home. No one expected her to live this long. We are a year and four months from her collapse. She is dying, inch by inch.

She is not dying well. Or maybe I should say she's not living well. Audray refuses to bathe. She refuses the homemaker who would clean her house, preferring instead, under duress and only of late, to pay a woman to tidy the kitchen and bath and her bedroom. The second floor of her lovely home is abandoned to cobwebs. She doesn't take her medications as prescribed, and maybe she can't any more -- even when told what to do. Audray denies that she has cancer. She calls her pain pills "aspirin". She still smokes. She doesn't wear her oxygen at night..

Audray is abusive to caregivers, chief among them another sister, younger than she by a year. In a recent inpatient stay (the only one in her time in hospice) to clear her impacted bowel, Audray threatened to hit an aide who wanted to help her wash her hair. The hair is unwashed. The sister who cooks for her, shops for her, looks after her house as much as she is allowed, weeps for the girlhood they shared, has serious health problems of her own. If not for Audray's caretaker sister, she would have starved long ago. For a long time now Audray has not had the strength to venture outside the house, let alone shop and cook.

Audray has one daughter, a good and faithful daughter. She calls every day. She visits from her home in the northeast as often as she can, given the demands of her burgeoning freelance career and a young adult son whose difficulties with life are breaking her heart. She comes often to her mother's remote mountain town, but stays only a few days. It's just too depressing. Her mother won't engage, won't yield, won't let her help, won't let anyone help. The house, smelly, gloomy and filthy, is oppressive.

Her daughter and I have visited together several times in the last year, cooking and trying to be cheerful. We clean, cut her hair, buy new clothes, tend the crippled dog (finally released from his misery of endless clockwise circles several months ago), clean out the briars in the side yard, haul out the trash. Anything to stay busy and avoid conflict with the intransigent patient. We leave, and the situation deteriorates; grime builds up, the weeds thrive.

We have to respect the patient's wishes, the doctor says. He comes to evaluate Audray and accepts her replies as evidence that she's able to make her own decisions. We shouldn't tell her she has cancer, he advises. He's young, the caretaker sister says, but she doesn't forgive him his views. He looks at the filthy kitchen -- greasy dishes unwashed in cold water in the sink, grimy walls and floors, countertops littered with cans and discarded packages, and the smell ... We have patients like this, he says.

She can't be living by herself, says the hospice nurse who sees her every week. But hers is not the voice that counts.

The caretaker sister recounts the latest happenings. When Audray opens her mouth, out comes gibberish. When the doctor comes, she can marshall "Uh huh", roll her eyes and shrug. The gibberish is nowhere in evidence. He orders nothing except an antibiotic, which may or may not be indicated by her symptoms. She can no longer work the puzzles she has always loved. Her daughter mails her a supply every week, cutting them from the newpaper, as she knows her frugal mother would not approve of spending money for such trifles.

What is wrong with this picture? Should the good and faithful daugher abandon her career (and its much needed income) and her son to devote all to her mother's care? Should the caretaker sister continue to jeapordize her fragile health to do the daily care, the demands of which will surely accelerate as Audray's condition deteriorates further? Perhaps it's all about money ... but wait, Audray has Medicare coverage and she owns her house, so is not totally without assets.

Today there is an intervention. Audray has agreed to accept a custodial care person for two hours each morning and two each afternoon. This person will administer her medications, help with her oxygen, clean as allowed, prepare food as allowed. Whether Audray understands that she is paying for this is undetermined. Whether she will really let this unknown person, when she comes next week, do anything for her, is undetermined. In the past Audray has agreed to accept help, only to reject it as soon as her daughter leaves town.

Daughter and I are in agreement. We would rather succumb to the big one (stroke, heart attack, falling off the side of a mountain, whatever) than go like this. Although, knowing Daughter, I doubt she would refuse help or refuse love from those that care for her. That's got to be the hardest aspect of this, but not a new one. Her mother can't accept her love, her help.

Her Mouth Ran Away With Her Mind

I spent several hours yesterday in a doctor's waiting room. You've been there, right? Let me set the scene.

 I sit at the front of the waiting room on a blue-upholstered bench, my back to the flat-screen TV that broadcasts cooking shows between commercials. The waiting room is filled with ranks of blue chairs, and natural light streams in from the window wall.  A nicely-groomed but somewhat stooped older woman enters from the door to the right, and crosses the room to the reception desk. She confirms her appointment with the surly receptionist, then turns to scan the room. She makes her way to the second rank of chairs and seats herself next to another woman.

And she starts talking.

She talks in breathy spurts, hurrying to push the words out. Her voice is gravelly, her delivery rapid but concise. She is an artist, we hear; paints on porcelain. She has recently moved to town and bought a house near her daughter. She had cataract surgery just a few days ago. She is writing a book. Her air conditioner broke and repair cost her $4000. She was married for 66 years to the same man. She has two kilns. Her son-in-law is in a wheelchair. She paints portraits of pets.

No pauses for replies, no small silences: a steady stream of words. Some of what she tells is interesting, or would be if not for the mind-numbing avalanche of words that streams from her mouth.

I wait for more than an hour, trying very hard to ignore her stream-of-consciousness outpourings. Her chosen listener is eventually called to the examining room. Our talker moves to another seat, this time a bench near the back of the waiting room, homing on a new target: this time, a man. "I know I talk too much," she tells him. But that doesn't stop her. When I am finally called to the examining room she still holds him in thrall.

I've met one other person, a man, who isn't comfortable with silence.  He occasionally hesitates between stream-of-consciousness utterances, pausing sometimes for as long as 4 seconds (yes, I've counted). This gal didn't hesitate at all. I wonder how she chooses her targets?

I learned a new word, logomania, the compulsion to talk very fast and very loud. That fits, although some definitions note that the talking might sometimes be incoherent. Neither of these people is incoherent. Their discourse is compulsive, coherent and utterly relentless. MUST TALK!!!!!

Doing a little more work with Google, I find that this symptom likely manifests in people with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder -- or maybe Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder. Given the single-minded pursuit of one-way communication, I'm betting on OCPD for these folks -- no attention deficit unless it's the inability to recognize what's meant by one's victim's glazed eyes.

Fortunately such people are rare. And I expect that the itch-factor I felt sitting in that waiting room has more to do with my age than anyone else's.

What would you do if this person sat next to you in the waiting room? Would you nod politely and take a mental vacation? Fake a phone call and move to another seat? Cancel your appointment and flee? I was tempted to the latter, and I wasn't even the stuckee!

Or yikes, even worse -- what would you do if, suddenly, one day, your mouth ran away with your mind?

Food Demons

I am a charter member of the Clean Plate Club. My first experience with the moral imperative "Clean your plate!" came, of course, at the family dinner table.

I come from a large family, and my mother served dinner family style. Competing with the two siblings nearest me, boys 5 and 7 years older, I learned the value of speed and strategic positioning  -- if I got the mashed potato bowl first I got more than the merest spoonful left after their depredations. The downside of getting the most desired item first was this: what I put on my plate, I had to eat. This was my mother's firm rule. "After all," she admonished us, "there are starving children in Africa."

Woe betide the child whose "eyes were bigger than his stomach", in my mother's pithy idiom. I vividly remember sitting at table for an interminable time, trying to stuff down those mealy green lima beans. Even wrapping them in bread and butter didn't help after the first half dozen. I outwaited the dishwashing crew and, finally alone in the kitchen, plopped those nasty beans one by one into the aquamarine ceramic vase conveniently stationed in the center of our kitchen table.  Of course I was found out later, but I accorded it a victory.

My sisters and I have handed down versions of the clean plate rule to our families. My nieces recently reminisced that their mother told them, "There are starving children in Armenia." We all know there are starving children all over the world, but I do think Armenia was a pretty exotic place for my sister to choose. Where ever do you suppose she met an Armenian?

At my family table we served meals plated rather than family style. Our dinner table had two rules: first, you must try at least one bite of everything; second, you don't have to eat all your meat. This worked fairly well. Our boys do eat green vegetables, even brussels sprouts. The occasional ossified broccoli floret or dessicated zucchini strip found under the dining table -- nevermind.

A nephew who came to visit us one summer (he was 12) credits his willingness to try new things to that short stint at our table. He was older than our boys, and his pride prompted him to set a good example for his young cousins. He tried everything willingly. He cleaned, with a lot of coaching, the first fish he ever caught. And then he was required to taste it.  He allowed, after eating the pan-fried morsel that, "Fish isn't so bad after all."

So clearly early eating habits have lasting effects. The insidious effect of my early and thorough indoctrination into the Clean Plate Club is that I find it very difficult to leave food on my plate. So the trick is to control what gets put in front of me. This makes eating out a challenge.

In recent years, as our appetites have shrunk, hubby and I have begun sharing entrees. And often we will order starters or starter-sized salads for our dinners. This is becoming easier, as more and more restaurants embrace the Small Plates trend. We managed to travel for three months, eating out each day, without gaining weight. So with activity and care, it is possible to manage one's intake.

But today I'm feeling guilty -- and about something that hasn't even happened yet.  I've arranged a gala restaurant event to celebrate my birthday, later this month. We're having the five-course tasting menu. I expect the portion sizes will be small. Still, five courses?

I'm contemplating -- what to do, what to do? I could carry containers in my handbag, and rescue the excess for later consumption. Gauche, right? Or perhaps I can pawn my uneaten food to hubby and son? So I would be encouraging them to overeat. Not good.

Or maybe, just maybe, just possibly, only for one night, I'll give myself a pass and leave my clean plate demons at home.

Look out for Falling Teeth!

My mother 's idiom included some rather odd sayings. One, used when she was fumbling for words, is, "I got my tongue wrapped around my eyetooth and couldn't see to talk." Another, used on occasions of jaw-dropping astonishment, is, "My teeth almost fell out of my mouth."

"Well, that's absurd," you say. But wait -- let me acquaint you with  the state of teeth in my house. My mother succumbed to false teeth in her forties, both upper and lower plates. My dad managed to hang on to his lower teeth -- he needed those to prop up his pipestem -- but also had an upper plate. I remember the day he had the remaining upper teeth extracted; he swore and spit blood out the window as he drove us from the dentist's office in the nearby town to our home up the holler. It seemed like a very long trip.

As you might imagine, the technology of false teeth in those days was somewhat ... approximate ... to belabor a point. A few days after the extraction, the dentist took a mold for the bottom (or the top, as may be) of the plate. The dentist also helped you pick the size and style of teeth, hopefully somewhat like your real teeth used to be. Before insertion, one cushioned the lower plate with a strip of foam material, and slathered the channels in both upper and lower plates with a fixative or glue. I wonder what that tasted like?

As time passed, the bone in the jaw deteriorated, and the plates loosened. The solution was more padding or better glue. Only in dire cases when a plate broke was a new one in order.

From time to time, the suction in my mother's upper plate would break, and the plate would fall to the bottom of her mouth with a loud "clack". She'd stick her thumb under the plate and lever it back into place without missing a beat. So, you see, it's wholly possible for one's teeth to almost fall out of one's mouth.

Wearing plates was not uncommon in that generation in that part of the country, in Appalachia. Bridges were much too expensive and implants didn't exist. When you lost enough teeth to compromise either biting or chewing, the dentist often recommended complete extraction and false teeth. Say goodbye to corn on the cob! Oh, and to raspberries -- those tiny seeds are very uncomfortable when they work their way under the plate. And maybe to steak, if you ever ate such a thing.

At least there was one benefit -- you never had to floss. One of my enduring memories is the glass of blue liquid, bubbling with the fervor of alka seltzer, in which reposed my mother's pink and white choppers. They cleaned themselves in the glass while she slept -- just like your retainer in the little cup of Retainer Brite. In the morning, a quick going-over with a nail brush and a rinse and voila! Clean teeth! And never any dental caries.

My own teeth aren't going to fall out of my mouth any time soon, although I believe it may have been a near thing. In our house, you went to the dentist when you had a toothache. He would either drill and fill or, if it was bad enough, pull the tooth. That is all. His drill was slow, slow, and he never numbed for fillings.

In college, I worked part-time and used some of my money to see a better dentist. I'm virtually certain he gave me a price break. He put in a creative spacer that saved the teeth in my left lower jaw. And in my early 20s I had a great deal of work done. My Yugoslavian dentist, who did all her own casting, furnished me with a mouthful of gold crowns. They lasted for 40 years, and in fact I still have two of them.

The young hygienists and techs at my (thankfully) very-up-to-date dentist often can't forbear to remark the teeth missing from my mouth (among others a canine that my childhood dentist removed because it overlapped an incisor) and the odd-looking, smoothly-rounded gold crowns.

The ability to bite and chew and to enjoy food is essential to aging happily. My mother-in-law, unlike my mother, kept her teeth in her mouth. Until the last month of her life, she ate with gusto. I'm planning to do the same.

So don't let your teeth fall out of your mouth, whatever it takes. In addition to contributing to a healthy old age, they keep your nose from touching your chin -- unless, of course, you're a witch and you like the nose-to-chin look, in which case ...

Not by the Hair on my Chinny-Chin-Chin

You remember that old children's tale, The Three Little Pigs? The Big Bad Wolf huffs, "Little pig, little pig, let me in". And the pig replies, "No, no, I won't let you in. Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin."

I think I'm turning into a pig. I've noticed for some time now that aging involves "unwanted facial hair". Especially on my chin. 

This is a problem is so widespread, given the epidemic of aging Baby Boomers, that it has the attention of Big Pharma.

 

womensheath.about.com reports:

"The Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and The Gillette Company announced the FDA approval of Vaniqa (eflornithine hydrochloride) Cream, 13.9% as the first topical prescription treatment for women with unwanted facial hair."

I wonder if it comes in a can. Like shaving cream?

The post goes on to say:

"Vaniqa has a unique mechanism of action and is believed to work by blocking an enzyme that is necessary for hair growth."

Boy, you wouldn't want to put that stuff anywhere you didn't mean to! ("What happened to your eyebrows, Jane?" "I was a little too enthusiastic with my Vaniqa.")

And 'believed to work'? They don't really know how it works? I think I'll stick with tweezers.

Joking aside, I  am glad there's something new to help people with severe problems.

Channeling Charlotte

September 27, 2010

Meet my mother-in-law, Charlotte. This picture was taken on the occasion of her 85th birthday, in 1993. She's wearing a skirt. That's the only thing that's unusual about her outfit.

Every day, Charlotte got up and dressed to meet any occasion -- no house dresses for this girl. No matter that "Arthur Itis" was visiting, making her bones ache and, near the end of her life, that it took every bit of her energy to shower and dress: she always met the day looking put together. Not only did she carefully select slacks and tops and sweaters to match, she made a careful selection of necklaces and earrings to accessorize.

Charlotte is no longer with us, having shuffled off her mortal coil in 2004. She lived with us for the last three years of her life, a blessing for my high-school-aged sons, and for me. I miss her still.

Inspired by Charlotte, I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm going to accessorize. I've always worn earrings, but rarely change them -- same old hoops, day after day. And I have lovely, lovely earrings; hubby buys me a pair on every trip we take.

I've rooted through my jewelry drawer and done an assessment. And I've been having a great  time shopping costume jewelry. Do you like this bracelet from anthropologie.com? I love wearing it.

On my jewelry-drawer-mining expedition, I discovered things I had forgot. Today I'm wearing a bead-and-silver bracelet that a young son bought for me once-upon-a-time at Four Corners, where the vendors offered bargains on a slack day. Prized more for the giver than the gift, I love wearing it.

My List of Little Pills

I am, for my age (don't you just hate that phrase?), in relatively (another weasel word) good health.

That said, I sure have been seeing a lot of doctors lately. After a three-month vacation, there is a certain amount of catching up to be done. And then there is the ankle surgery to remove a bone spur and a chip. And the visit to the dermatologist I've been putting off, not to mention seeing a new ophthalmologist. And it seems that because I'll soon be 62, my Primary Care Physician (don't you love these titles?) thinks I'm suddenly at risk for a whole bunch of might-be diseases. So there are the referrals and the tests. Good grief.

And every doctor, no exceptions, wants a list of my medications -- including vitamins, if you please.

I made a special trip to the drugstore to buy a packet of index cards. Talk about memories -- do you remember when you did research for a term paper in a library? Looking at real books? And you took notes on index cards? Where was ghostpapers.com when we needed it?

I took a pen and one of my spiffy new 3" x 5" index cards and proceeded to FILL THE WHOLE CARD with the list of my little pills.

O ...  M ... G

I always thought tales of people having to keep track of 50 different meds were a bit over the top. I'm healthy (definition: old, but still walking by myself) and I've filled ONE WHOLE SIDE OF AN INDEX CARD with a list of the stuff I take?

I've had a few days to recover from this stunning revelation. And I've got the other 99 or however many index cards, all pristine and new. I've decided that I'll use scotch tape to create an accordion fold of index cards so there's room for all my future medications. I can whip it out of my wallet and flip it out full length on the examining table. Ta dah!

If you can't awe them with age, might as stun them with style. Let me know if you'd like me to make one for you.