Aging Gracefully. *ahem*

First, I posted earlier today, a picture and a short post from the phone. When I post from the phone, as I'll be doing next week, it's not easy to send out the mailing list email, so I won't be doing that. I'm just saying.

Last night over dinner, K and I had an interesting conversation about my health issues in general, and related things. I don't like to feel as if my health issues are taking up everybody's attention, and so I rarely call attention to them myself unless I feel that I have to. I don't discuss them with people all the time (except you, and my sister.) In her later years, if someone said to my mother, "Hi, how are you?" she told them. "Well, I'm still very constipated, no better since yesterday," and so on. I do not want to be that person.

As a result, the kids have sort of gotten this impression that my sister and I are not really impaired significantly, but that we will be so when it's convenient for us, say, to board the plane early, or to avoid the lines at the parks. First, I find this insulting, and I would think they would know better, but I explained that this is not the case. I told her that if she sees me walking with a cane, it's a safe bet that I should have been using it for two weeks already.

I think she did develop a better sense of where I am physically after we talked, and now she's more concerned about me taking proper care of myself, which is nice, but also not the kind of attention I would want, which is why I keep things quiet. I'm not that old; I don't need my kids to start asking me if I've taken my meds, and why aren't I using my cane? I guess there's a balance here we need to achieve.

I also reminded her that I, much more than she, have a good understanding of the needs of people who are more disabled than I. I have mentioned before, but not for a long time, that my father's business partner for 50 years was among the final group of polio victims. I was six months old when he became ill, and he did not walk after that. He was like an uncle to me, and the term "wheelchair accessible" did not exist then. There were no ramps, except the one on their office that they put there themselves. Handicapped parking? The local police put up signs outside their office door warning everybody else not to park there, that's it. Bottom line, I am sensitive to these needs in other people, and would not abuse them.

Which is not to say that I would not use accommodations to which I am entitled and which I need. I don't think I can wait on an hour-long line with Crohn's; I'd have to leave every fifteen minutes to find a bathroom, and I'd never get to the front of the line!

Anyway, the only thing I've thought about is that our two cousins would get a look at us with our arthritis and cane and whatever and think we were a million years old or something. But Colorado cousin just called a while ago; among other things, she apologetically told me that she has severe tendinitis -- ankle -- and her doctor has her wearing a boot for awhile. So it's all of us. (I won't even go into her sister's issues at the moment.)




watching ALADDIN :: ENTRY #2105
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