Humpbacks, Cold Fingers and Roller Coasters

You might say that I’m in Health Care Central this week. Saturday I went to a free screening for PAD (peripheral artery disease) and Monday I went to a lecture on old people with humped backs (technically known as Hyperkyphosis) and later this week I have a dentist appointment. I like to get the lion’s share of my medical junk out of the way in April so any follow-up stuff can happen before summer gets into full swing…like my upcoming appointment in early May to get my breasts pressed out flat like pancakes and don’t we all know how much fun that is.

I passed the test for PAD with flying colors. (I’ve used the phrase all my life and I’m just now getting around to googling its origin. It comes from nautical history and has to do with ships flying their colored flags as they neared their home ports to communicate if they’d been victorious in battle or with their trading endeavors. And as soon as I read that nugget of history I realized that once upon a time I knew that. I hate when that happens! But I suppose our brains can only hold so much so why should it surprise me when things fall out?)

Back on topic: The vascular doctor at the screening gave me some interesting---at least to me---information regarding why my fingers are always icy cold and often turn white, even in warm weather. Can you believe it, it’s a condition with a name: Raynaud’s Phenomenon. Who knew? It’s caused by blood vessels in smaller arteries in the skin narrowing which reduces the oxygen to fingers, toes and/or earlobes. In my case it’s probably connected to my hypothyroidism and it’s not a sign of a serious vascular disease about to rear its ugly head in the future. The “prescription”---and this cracks me up---is to carry chemical hand warmers. He also said if I’m going to be outside in the winter for extended periods I can take a niacin (vitamin B3) an hour beforehand. I love it when the quirks and weird stuff going on in our bodies is explained.

Humpbacks---and not the whales. Our senior hall doesn’t offer a lot of lectures on health topics--the director puts the accent on Life Enrichment instead---and the upper body alignment lecture is the first health related one I’ve attended. I’m starting to develop a humpback and I wanted to know if it’s common to get electrical shock-like pain with them, which I often get across the top of my shoulders at the base of my neck. The doctor who gave the lecture was a young blonde in a short neon-orange dress who looked more like a Sport’s Illustrated model than a doctor. She talked about good and bad upper body alignment so wearing a dress that looked like it was spray-painted on actually did help her illustrate those alignments. (We need to keep our ears over our shoulders, ladies!) I did learn a few interesting things like a lifetime of habitual bad posture is just as likely as osteoporosis to be the cause of the humpback so common in my peer age bracket and it’s more than just about body aesthetics. The rounded shoulders puts pressure on all our organs causing a bunch organs related health issues that I didn’t bother to write down and can’t remember now.

We learned how to ‘knead’ the lymph nodes in our armpits, our carotid arteries and the thyroid gland. We were told to spend 15 to 20 minutes a day lying face up on a pillow placed lengthwise from the base of neck to small of the back. (I tried it last night and it felt good!) We were told if we already have the early stage of a humpback to not do sit-ups, crunches or bend over to touch our toes. Reading in bed and sleeping in a fetal position also contributes to humpback development. The doctor also stressed the importance of doing certain stretching exercises that opens up our chest area and retrains the muscles, and to get enough of the minerals boron and magnesium in addition to the vitamins most us already know about that help keep our bones healthy. Probably the most pragmatic thing I learned, though, was that there’s a place near-by where I live that does therapeutic massages to deal with humpbacks. In May when my schedule isn’t so full I’m going to give it a try. Hand-ons manipulation and transcutanous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) can help.

I did do something in recent days that was more fun than listening to doctors who were young enough to be my grandchildren. (I still can’t believe that bleached-blonde was a doctor and the vascular doctor was hot enough to play one on TV.) I went to a senior hall lecture on a now defunct amusement park that was in town when I was young---a HUGE park on a lake with a roller coaster, dance pavilion and a roller rink. I like history even if I don’t always remember it with flying colors. As I sat there I realized I'd been to the same lecture three-four years ago at the Historical Society. It didn't matter because the speaker has a dry sense of humor and she had us all laughing frequently. Combined with lunch at the Guy-Land Cafeteria afterward, I had a great afternoon. ©

Maybe........

MAYBE it’s because I spent seven years of my life visiting a nursing home twice a week that I’m not looking forward to going again. Or MAYBE it’s because it’s not unusual for people my age to be living in a nursing home and I’m scared they’re going to lock the doors and not let me leave. Whatever the source of my apprehensions, it felt weird being in a group of women ages 55 to 80 as we sat around a table stuffing assorted Halloween candy, spiders and gummy worms into bags for the residents of a nursing home. But that’s what we did at our Red Hat Society business meeting. Fifty of them---bags, not ladies. Apparently, we’re going trick-or-treating in reverse. We’ll be delivering candy room-to-room instead of getting it by going door-to-door. Worry wart that I am I can visualize half the recipients of the bags ending up in ER. I know I would have a heart attack if I opened a bag and found two big black spiders mating inside. And the person I visited twice a week, my mother-in-law, would have eaten the plastic arthropods. How smart is it to include non-eatable things in candy bags going to people who have been known to pick lint off the floor and pop it in their mouths? But I’m a newbie in the group so I kept my worry wart thoughts to myself.

Also at the meeting the “Princess in Charge of Veteran Affairs” reminded us all to start accumulating stuff to put in shoe boxes for homeless vets that our chapter will be packing in November and giving out at Christmas. Jeez, I hope we don’t have to deliver those boxes in person---although it would be “character building” if we did. (That’s what my brother used to tell me and his kids whenever we didn’t want to do something.) Ya, ya. I know. I’m a liberal and liberals believe in helping people who are down on their luck. Save your heckling for someone else. I’m good at writing checks and sending them periodically to the soup kitchen and the homeless shelter in town. In years gone by I was even good at talking to the homeless when Don was at my side because I knew he could handle any threatening situation that might come up. But a swarm of old ladies dressed in purple and red climbing under bridges and viaducts looking for refrigerator box condo communities? How’s that going to work out? My new Red Hat chapter, I suspect, is going to be taking me out of my comfort zone a lot. MAYBE peer pressure will finally catch up to me after all these years of avoiding it.

My social calendar this week also included a lecture at the Historical Society. The lecture was about an old amusement park that used to be in town in between the 1890s to 1954. It was Disneyland huge and it drew in a string of well-known entertainers at the dance pavilion, playhouse and vaudeville theater---one venue alone could seat 1,700 people. The park also had a roller coaster, Ferris wheel, four story toboggan run/roller coaster and a roller rink where I skated more than a few times. The park sat in between two lakes and you could rent canoes that came with picnic baskets so you could lunch on the water. Like people who have reached their expiration dates, it’s hard to believe an amusement park so big and popular could disappear as if it never existed except for the pictures left behind in a book.

MAYBE it was the romanticism of a by-gone era or the pure talent of a cameraman to tell a story, but I went home from the lecture longing for something I can’t have. I want more candid photos of Don and me together! We took photos of each other, of the dogs, of scenery and flowers but any photos of us together were usually taken at someone’s wedding and they were formal, line-ups and stiff. “You stand over there by the bride.” “Line up by height.” “Say cheese.” I want the kind of photos where we were having a quiet or romantic moment while hundreds of people were having the time of their lives in the distance background. I want pictures of myself and Don lounging in a canoe or feeding swans along the shore on a sunny summer afternoon. Iconic photographs of an iconic era like those at the slideshow/lecture. The current generation with their cell phone cameras sure won’t have to long wistfully for more photos when they get old. Judging by what they post on Facebook young people pretty much document every moment of their days. Do they think if it isn’t captured in a photo it didn’t happen? If so, I’m beginning to wonder if they might be right. Am I just imagining the smiles that passed between Don and me so long ago? Did he really hold my hand when I needed his support? Was he real? Were we real? MAYBE I’m not so sure anymore and it hasn’t even been two years yet since he passed away. What’s it going to be like in ten?

Time marches on. The pines outside my window are thinning their needles. The cattails are losing their color. The season is changing and Halloween is just around the corner. MAYBE if I can remember not to eat any plastic spiders when I visit the nursing home with my Red Hat chapter they won’t want to keep me locked inside. MAYBE, like the main character in Water for Elephants, I'll find a way to escape the nursing home and run away to join the circus if that does happens. ©