Treatments and Plans

 

 “Women my age don’t have babies because we’d put them down

and forget where we left them.”

author unknown 

Breaking a bone in my elbow last spring was probably a blessing in disguise because it caused my orthopedic doctor to set a fire under my internist to start osteoporosis treatment again. A year ago I ended a five year round of Flomax---the maximum length of time you can stay on that drug---but a recent bone density test proved it didn’t do much good. I’ve lost 27% of my bone mass, three and a half inches in height and have had broken three bones since menopause. I’m a hip or back fracture waiting to happen.

It took an entire month for the insurance company to look for a reason to disapprove the new treatment plan but they couldn’t find one. So this week I had to take a class at the hospital to learn the ends and out of injecting my self on a daily basis with Forteo. Let me tell you, I was nervous about doing my first shot. I’ve had allergic reactions to drugs in the past so I was worried this drug would kick start my chronic hives again. The last time I had them they lasted nineteen months without a break but that’s a story for the People Who Scratch Themselves to Death Gazette.  I left the injection class hive free so now I’m looking forward to making a pin cushion out of my stomach. Forteo is supposed to be the best drug on the market for building bone mass and strength and the nurse teaching the class says many people actually feel better in four short months. Wouldn’t that be nice. Give me a year and I’ll be leaping over tall buildings in a single bound. Forteo is just another name for Kryptonite, so says the rumor I’m starting here and now.

I’ve got a long, boring and lonely holiday weekend lined up but after that my September calendar has twenty scheduled social events mixed in with hum-drum appointments starting next week with my first Red Hat Society meeting in ten years. It’s going to feel like going back to school. I’ve unpacked my box of red and purple hats, scarves and other bling. I’ve purchased a new red notebook, pen and shoes. And I’ve got enough red and purple clothing already in my closet that I won’t have trouble pulling some outfits together. All I need to buy is a fancy, garden party dress come next spring. If you remember what it was like to play dress-up when you were a little kid you’ll understand the thrill of wearing the Red Hat Society garb. Ya, you might feel silly when you go out in public the first few times you do it. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it, to be reminded that we can grow older without losing our playful spirit. As their website says, “Red Hatters refuse to passively sit back and allow life to slowly lose its fizz. We prop open the doors to our minds, determined to explore, learn, and find ways to infuse play into our lives.” Wearing the Red Hat ‘garb’ is the only hard and fast rule that all chapters have to follow. It's like putting on your play clothes knowing you're going to the park to play on the swing set and monkey bars. 

To balance out the Red Hat silliness I’ll spend plenty of time working at the new museum in September. I’m a fish out of water with all the retired teachers and city fathers volunteering there but so far they are very accepting of me, the new kid on the block. But donating stuff to their auction isn't going so well. Two of the three pieces I donated to the fundraiser are going in the museum for display instead. Nothing makes you feel old like knowing your prize possessions belong in a museum. I'm just kidding about that. Don would be tickled pink to know these things will be forever preserved in his hometown museum. I was actually hoping for the reaction they received. 

I’ve never had to work so hard at finding a new place for myself in this big, lonely world. Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember back in the late sixties I wrote a letter to Ann Lander’s advice column on this very topic and I actually got a reply. She told me to get out in the world doing things that I enjoy and the rest will follow naturally. “You can’t meet people sitting at home every night.” So I immersed myself in leisure time classes, sports, a service sorority and assorted activities in an effort to meet people. It worked. I met Don and the rest is history. Widowhood has brought me full circle; here I am again forty-four years later doing the same things for the same reasons. Well, not quite the same. I’m not looking for a soul mate this time. I’m just looking for a gaggle of gal pals I can call my own. ©.

The Lonely Widow and the Exterminator

If you came here today hoping to find something to laugh about, you’re plum out of luck. The dog took my funny bone, buried in the back yard and by now the ground moles have devoured it. I hate ground moles! I have so many ground mole mounds marked with flags for the exterminator my yard looks like an 18 hole golf course. The neighbors probably think the mole exterminator and I are having a hot, torrid affair he’s been here so often this summer. They (the moles not the neighbors) must smell really bad when they die---duh, Jean, they’re decomposing---because the dog follows their tunnel runs until he finds a good sniffing spot and if I’d let him, he’d start digging. He actually got one before I got smart.

I guess I should feel lucky that the biggest problem in my life right now could theoretically be solved by keeping the exterminator on my speed dial. Wow, it just dawned on me that the term “speed dial” will be a thing of the past in the not too distant future, what with smart phones taking over the planet. Ten years from now I’ll be telling a caregiver to “call my niece, she’s on my speed dial” and the caregiver will look at me like “what’s a speed dial you crazy old woman?” This reminds me, if I should die tonight, no one should think they aren’t loved because they aren’t on my speed dial list. My landline phone plan doesn’t include long distance so if I want to call family in another area code I have to use my cell phone. I know, I know, I need to join the 21^st century by getting rid of my landline and my old lady Jitterbug cell and invest in one very smart phone that can turn lights on or off, unlock the back door for repairmen and fry bacon on Sunday mornings.  In truth, I’m afraid to get a phone smarter than me. I’m afraid they’ll come a day when I’ll forget how to use it. With “dumb phones” I’ve had decade’s worth of practice embedded in my brain so I’m less likely to forget how they function.

I was feeling sorry for myself last weekend. That happens a lot on Sundays when there is nothing to do, no place to go and the phone doesn’t ring. Not that it rings much the other six days of the week but once in a while I’ll hear a human voice telling me about a sale at Salvation Army or that the FBI reports home burglaries are up and I need an alarm system or that I could fall and having a medical alert pendant could save my life. The worst telemarketing call comes from a credit card company warning me that this is the last call I’ll get from them about lowing my interest rate. I wish! I’d add my name to the national ‘do not call’ register but how will I know if the phone is still working if I do?

Seriously, though, why do we---me to be more precise---have to make life so hard when in fact it’s pretty easy? For example, I don’t live in a country that is war torn or where its citizens can’t trust those in power not to use chemicals of mass destruction against them. I don’t live in a place where food or water is scarce. I don’t live on the edge of poverty and my health is better than many people in my age bracket. I could go on forever listing the things I don’t have to worry about including some that are clearly age related like I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant out of wedlock or getting head lice from sharing a comb with a classmate. We get smarter as we age. We seniors know stuff and not just history book facts and figures. We know important, life-lessons like how to find inner strength and give comfort to those who need it. We know that people die and those left behind must go on. We know that loneliness can be cured if we keep putting ourselves out there in the big, scary world so we can eventually connect with others in the same boat. And we know how to laugh when the mole exterminator finally arrives and the sprinkler system turns on while he happens to be standing directly over one of its heads. Oops!

“Do you have a set of dry clothes with you?” I asked while twisting the end of an imaginary villain’s mustache. “You could come inside this widow’s house and change if you like.”  

“No, no ma’am. I’m fine,” he replied while backing away. “Occupational hazard. It happens all the time.” ©

The Project

In recent weeks I’ve become obsessed with my skin. My face is full of lines and wrinkles and suffers from years of neglect. So what’s the problem, you’re thinking, two out of three of those things are age appropriate, aren’t it? Well, yes, they are however my mom had skin like a porcelain doll when she was my age and I’m bemoaning the fact that mine isn’t. Apparently flawless and fair English skin skips haphazardly through the generations. My famous Colonial era ancestor---whose portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.---plus several great-aunts, my mother and one of my nieces are all skin twins. Why not me? I share the same gene pool. It isn’t fair.

One day I was in the facial products isle of the store when I spotted what is essentially a power sander for your face and after seeing a second brand of the same type of tool I decided it must be the latest and greatest gadget designed to take dollars away from wrinkly old people like me. What the heck, I thought, it’s never too late to start caring about your skin. So I bought a face sander. The second time I used it I got too much water on the disposal pad and some of the micro-derma abrasion in the pad dripped into my eye. Let me tell you, it hurt almost as much as the time I Crazy-Glued my eye shut. But I was undeterred. The next time I used the mini power tool on my forehead I got smart and held a washcloth along my eyebrows to catch any drips.

I am in week two of my of skincare project and I can see a difference but not enough difference to make some old dude at the senior hall want to eye-hump me from across a room. That’s a joke. Old dudes can’t see that far for one thing, and for another I just heard that term for the first time a few days ago and I’ve been wanting to use ‘eye-humping’ in a sentence every since. It makes me laugh---maybe because ‘hump’ was my late husband’s favorite euphemism for sex. Besides, at the senior center there are ten plus women for every guy so if I actually did want to get eye-humped I’d have to stand in line. There are some beautiful, slim trim and well-put-together women in my peer group. Although I must say some of their conversations are lacking. For example the last time I was there some of the women at my table were talking about jewelry brands until my eyes crossed and I wanted to scream, “Who really gives a flying fig!” Apparently the answer to that question is at least four out of  the 109 women who were in the hall that day.

The box my power sander came in---it’s actually called a micodermabrasion system---makes many claims about reducing pores and age spots leading to smoother, firmer skin with less wrinkles and a luminous glow. All that for twenty-one bucks. What’s not to love about that prospect coming true in six to eight weeks? But with my luck and enthusiasm for the product I’ll probably end up sanding all my facial features off and no one will recognize me without my nose and high cheek bones. I’ll keep you posted.

Fall is approaching. I hate that. Do I want to see my first gaggle of geese heading south? No! Do I want to see frost on the pumpkins or radiant colors in the trees or any of the other sights that inspire poets to form pretty sentences on paper? Hell, No! I want time to stand still, to stop its march across my life. I want. I want. I want. Do people ever quit wanting what we can’t have? I suppose, though, if we were predisposed to never want change mankind never would have invented hand tools or the wheel and I’d be in a cave right now drawing on the walls while waiting for the mud mask on my face to dry. What? Even cave women must have wanted to look good. Why else do you think they invented the comb and leather thongs? ©

“You don't stop laughing when you grow old,

you grow old when you stop laughing.”
George Bernard Shaw

Painting above:  Old Woman at the Mirror by Bernado Strozzi