There comes a time in our lives when we are forced to face our age: that “senior moment”, the brain freeze, the inability for focus or even to navigate a bumpy sidewalk or flight of stairs. As we grope around to remember the name of someone or stall when completing the simple mathematics of computing a tip on a restaurant bill, we experience that fearful moment of doubt: “Am I going senile?”
Having just arrived in Iowa, my new state of residence in the United States, occupying my daughter and her husband’s guest room, I needed to establish with a Primary Care Physician. I was confident that my new doctor would be impressed by my low blood pressure and low cholesterol levels and general good health. However, I am still carrying around my “Covid 19” extra pounds and cringe when asked to step on the scale as part of my physical exam. When the doctor asked if I was depressed, I was a little confused, but then remembered that this question is part of the physicians brief these days. I took a moment to consider my state of mind and answered that I am an optimistic fatalist and, no, not depressed. Then, I was given the mental acuity test.
First, I was asked what day of the week it was. Yikes! I had to really think about that one. Okay, I am retired, and I had just arrived on a twenty-two hour overseas flight to Iowa a few weeks earlier. I blurted out, “Thursday?” Luckily, it was indeed Thursday, April 24th. Then, I was asked to repeat five words, which I would have to recite from memory later. Okay, I thought, no problem.
Secondly, I was asked to name as many animals as I could in two minutes. I tried to think of the order I would use on a visit to the zoo but ran out of animals before the time was up. However, I could draw a clock with the time set at 10:50, so that was a plus. But by the end of the test, when I couldn’t remember more than three of the initial five words, I felt pathetic and a little afraid. Did I have dementia? My father had died at eighty-three with Alzheimer’s disease. It was painful to remember him losing language and unable to recognize his wife or children. Was I headed in that direction? After a tense five minutes waiting for the results, the nurse returned to tell me that, according to my answers, I was normal. Normal being a relative term, I was hardly assured.
Then, a week later, coming out of the Centerville Chamber of Commerce, I missed a step and fell hard. I realized I could not get up. The attractive older gentleman who had just served me, rushed out to haul me to my feet. He had seen me hit the pavement and was rightly concerned since the new building had a treacherous narrow step at the door! A lawsuit waiting to happen. He had thick grey hair, a full beard and looked to be around my age. Our eyes met, his piercingly blue and full of concern, mine filled with pain and panic. As he was struggling with my dead weight, I am sure he was thinking, “Who is this clumsy, old woman!”
A week passed with a rainbow of bruises moving across my foot before I finally admitted to myself that the foot was getting no better. I went to the hospital for an X-ray, which confirmed that a bone in my foot was broken. I was fitted with a large, Velcro-laden, black “boot” extending from my knee to my toes. The uneven sole of the thing made me wobbly, so my daughter bought me a cane at the Walmart pharmacy. Now I definitely felt old!
Despite my children reminding me that bones heal more slowly in the elderly, I was fairly certain I wouldn’t be hobbling through TSA security with a huge boot on my foot before I board the plane back to Spain at the end of June. Wrong again. At my follow-up x-ray, the doctor told me I needed four more weeks in the boot!
The silver lining was at the airline check-in counter I qualified as needing “Traveler’s Assistance” and spent the next three hours in a wheelchair manned by a very kind American Airlines assistant. I was boarded first, wheeled down the jetway and helped to my seat. In Madrid, where the plane had stairs to navigate, a sort of forklift contraption sidled up to the larger door of the plane and we (there were three other incapacitated travelers on that flight) were wheeled onto the “elevator” and lowered to the tarmac. There, we were loaded into a private van and driven to the baggage claim. It was all very efficient.
Underneath my children’s concern is a thinly veiled hint that “Mom is losing it”. My son has urged me to start taking Lion’s Mane Mushroom supplements; I looked it up and it is for brain health to offset dementia. My daughter thinks I am wacky, even more than my usual wackiness. She questions my decisions and second-guesses my ideas. So, I must be sending off vibes that my mental state is failing. Is their solicitous behavior masking real concerns about my future independence?
I do need to continue to travel overseas and back each year to spend time with my daughter in Iowa and my son in Granada. My teenage granddaughter in Spain think I am stylish and “hip”.
People have often remarked that I don’t look my age. It is true that I don’t have any grey hair and, despite years spent in the sun, my facial ritual has spared me some wrinkles. But I am turning seventy-seven this December and this past summer seemed a turning point in my energy and vitality levels. The broken foot threw me for a loop. I thought I was invincible.
My mother lived to be one hundred and was sharp as a tack to the very end. She carried on playing golf three times a week and going to lunch with friends almost every day. I don’t know if I am aiming to live to one hundred, but I would like to maintain memory and brain function until my time is up. So, I dutifully down the Lion’s Main capsules and other multi vitamins. I wear the Fitbit my daughter gave me and try to walk five thousand steps a day. I am thankful for my good health and my good genes, and I hope that someday soon I will be able to fit into those good jeans I wore before Covid 19.
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