Body Parts

 I went to the eye doctor today. Not the “oh my goodness, you really do need a new prescription, we’ll fix you up in a jiffy,” pat your knee kind of eye doctor. Today I went to an ophthalmologist, a card-carrying, diploma wielding, real deal kind of doctor. This is the guy who is allowed to get near your eyeballs with sharp instruments kind of doctor.

 He didn’t wave scalpels and needles at me, not yet. Perhaps he didn’t want to scare me prematurely. Today was a day of investigation - - to discover if I have cataracts (which I do) and to determine if I need to do anything about those bad boys yet (which I don’t.)  I saw no knives in evidence, or needles, saws or thumbscrews. No doubt he’ll drag those out at a later date. Today he went spelunking in my eyes. Today was the third- degree, bright lights directed at my pupils, peering deep into my eyes from behind various machines that clicked, hummed and spit out piles of papers covered with numeric formulas. Given that I have been myopic in the extreme since  8^th grade, we killed quite a few trees today, the doctor and I.

  

  He is a very nice guy this ophthalmologist. Though I must say, I was surprised that they are now giving medical degrees to 12-year-olds. Perhaps all the doctors I know began round faced and boyish, but I didn’t know them then.  I am accustomed to doctors who are older than me, wiser, with years of experience. And yet I have observed over the past few years that I keep getting handed off to new and younger doctors.

  

  I am sure I was told by the time I was seventeen or eighteen, that aging is a process. It begins at conception and will continue until death. Maybe I didn’t pay attention in biology class that day, the subject having little resonance. At seventeen or eighteen life lay before me in a glorious array of possibilities, some reasonable, such as becoming a history teacher, some not. Olympic diving comes immediately to mind. If I had any thoughts about the eventual deterioration of my body, they floated away like a helium balloon on a sunny day.

   

  The first clue, had I cared to take note, occurred while I was still in high school. One morning as I brushed my auburn locks, I pulled my bangs away from my forehead.  The upsweep revealed a startling patch of gray underneath the red. I was surprised but not shocked; my mother was totally gray by the time she was thirty. Feeling unique with my skunk striped flair, it was 1970 after all, I never attempted coloring the gray patch. By the time the serious gray made an appearance it was no big deal.

  

  Time passed, accelerating as I grew older, and so it was, one morning, when I was fifty-two, I discovered that I was unable to button my pants.  These were the same pants that had buttoned the night before. Pants gaping open, I considered my stomach. How had it expanded in such a short amount of time? Maybe it was a rapidly growing tumor?  What else could it be? In a state of panic I made an emergency appointment with my doctor.

  

  This doctor was the first hand-off of many I was to experience in the next ten years. The grandfatherly ob/gyn who had delivered my babies had turned his practice over to a younger doctor because he believed he had the “right attitude.”

   

  “Mrs.Shipley, you are fat.” Dr. Hand-Off delivered his diagnosis bluntly. BAM! Right between the eyes, I never saw it coming; so much for the right attitude.  At that moment I alternated between desperately wanting my grandfatherly doctor (who never was so gauche as to mention my weight) back and the overwhelming desire to shove my fist up this new doctor’s nose. The blood roared in my ears as he assured me that this was the result of the normal aging process and the reduction in hormones as I left my reproductive years behind me. Blah, blah, blah, his scientific explanations didn’t help.  I had become fat - - overnight! Even though I have adjusted, bought larger clothes and covered my mirrors in black cloth, I still don’t like it, or him.

    

  My eyesight has always been bad. I discovered the world was miraculous when I saw that individual leaves on trees had definition upon being presented with my first pair of glasses in eighth grade. The invention of plastic lenses was a life changer, so I had little problem accepting glasses as my new normal. The changing of my vision didn’t particularly bother me as I grew older graduating from merely corrective lenses to bi-focals.

    

  Had I been born in prehistoric times, between my poor eyesight and even worse teeth I wouldn’t have lasted until noon. The problem with my teeth was lack of exposure to dentistry as a young child; that and an inexhaustible supply of Kool-Aid. It was cheap.  Apparently there were no red alerts out in the 1950s about the dangers that could befall sugared- up kids. My mother was terrified of dentists, which explains why she didn’t see any good reason why her children should go to one. I saw my first dentist when at the age of six, resulting in the discovery of six cavities, four in my newly sprouted six-year molars. The teeth were all filled without the aid of Novocain. Needless to say, my opinion of dentistry was formed at an early age and it was not good.

  

  The humongous early fillings resulted in early crowns in my twenties.  The dental work was completed by a dentist who thankfully believed in the wonders of anesthesia, Dr. Fillmore. I kid you not, that was his name. In my most ridiculous moments I couldn’t make up something like that. Crowns worked fine for me as long as I stayed away from the sticky stuff, like jelly beans, jolly ranchers and boiled rice. A good black jelly bean would pull them right off. The white rice was okay for crowns actually, but not so good for filled teeth. One of those aforementioned six year molars split vertically, bottom to top, on a mouthful of Minute Rice.

   It is hard to believe, but there is no cure for split up the middle teeth. “Can’t we super glue it back together?” I suggested hopefully to my dentist. Apparently, super glue and teeth don’t do well paired together. The only solution was to extract the tooth. Losing that tooth threw me into my first age- induced depression. Up to that time I had ignored getting older. I simply hadn’t any reason to think about it.  I had toddlers at home even though I was on the south side of forty.  I wondered, how could my teeth be falling out when my babies were just now growing theirs?

  

  That extraction began a downward dental spiral that involved more crowns, permanent bridges and implants to ensure I won’t have to eat applesauce for the next forty years. As Dr. Fillmore once remarked, “Your jaw muscles are too big for your teeth. Your teeth just can’t hold up to the pounding.”  This sad situation must be a result of all the jabbering I indulged in growing up as a member of an Irish family. Exercise, so they say, builds muscle.

  Internal body parts began to fail as well.  “It’s your gallbladder. You fit the typical patient, fat, fair and forty,” my surgeon pronounced. There it was again, that word - - fat. What medical school churns out these guys, I wondered?  Is it just one school or are they all that way? No donation for the general scholarship fund coming from me, I can promise you that.  I fired that doctor on the spot and moved on to the next, hoping for a better outcome.

    

  The second surgeon confirmed my gall bladder had to go, but in kinder gentler terms. He was a doctor more to my taste, performing his work in cowboy boots, rock and roll playing in the background.

  “That sounds like the Fabulous Thunderbirds,”   I remarked as I was being wheeled into surgery.

  The anesthesiologist answered, “Why yes, you have a good ear. If you don’t like it, we can change the music. We don’t want to put you to sleep hearing music you don’t like.”

  Put me to sleep - - unfortunate phrasing, that. As I drifted off, I caught a glimpse of my surgeon scrubbing up, boots tapping as the Georgia Satellites flowed into my ears. There is a doctor I can respect; excellent taste in music and footwear.

  

  I continue to be distressed as it has come to pass that my knees don’t hold up in a squat. I can get down with no difficulty. It is the getting up that presents the challenge. I am not sure why this would be. I use my knees as I always have. Yesterday I got stuck in the garden as I squatted down in an attempt to determine if the seedlings I was inspecting were friend or foe.  I was left with the choice of remaining there until someone noticed and called the fire department or suffer the indignity of rolling over the zinnias in order to right myself.  I chose the zinnia roll, though I do support my local fire fighting volunteers. Likewise I am hampered by a bad ankle, the result of stepping into too many holes in my careless youth. Fortunately, there are herbal medications that help. After watching a couple friends go through joint replacement surgery, I have concluded it is nothing I care to try myself. No doubt the surgeon would discuss the stress on my ankle is due to my weight.

  

  All other systems seem to be functioning normally; I am healthy and grateful for it. While I hate to admit it, I probably am a pound or two over the legal load limit, but as yet shouldn’t cause any bridges to collapse. I am descended from sturdy peasant stock on both sides of my family; my Irish genetics no doubt evolving so as to be low to the ground. This is a definite advantage in spotting the potatoes.  We all tend to become more rotund in true weeble-like fashion as we age. And, living in the Midwest, I have found having solid underpinning is a good thing in a big wind. I am much harder to blow over than all those friends who have spent their lives living on lettuce.

  

  As I look around I realize that my body parts are in better working order than many of my contemporaries. Sure, there are a few who run marathons.  I press the “Like” button on Facebook to show them my support; which is about as close to a marathon as I ever intend to get. 

  

  I sometimes wonder why no one ever told me that my body would betray me just as I supposedly got smarter. It’s a trade-off the old canard advises. I have decided that is propaganda so you don’t feel so bad about impending decrepitude. Who wants to see millions of gimpy baby boomers waving signs and protesting that deception?

  “Older but Dumber” isn’t a slogan anyone is buying.