Peeking through the curtains...

"It's not that I have something to hide,

I just have nothing I want you to see."

– Andres Niccol screenwriter,

movie – Anon: Spoken by

Amanda Seyfried

I didn’t want to admit it. In fact, I thought I’d left all that behind. It’s one of those things you imagine that changing times and circumstances would cause it to drift away into the currents of yesteryear. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

I guess it’s true, everything you have done in life is recorded somewhere in the memory banks, and if that ‘doing’ involved other people, well, you just have to deal with the consequences.

I might as well just come out and say it. If confession is truly good for the soul, then here goes.

I am a voyeur plain and simple. If I were sincere, I'd have to say I am surprised how exciting it is. In the early years, surprisingly, I didn't find it nearly as stimulating.

In those times, I have to admit, the motivation was truly questionable. But everyone I knew, at least in the circle of folks with whom I ran, was doing it. I realized some of them genuinely loved it. Their eyes would sparkle when talking about their latest foray or adventure. It wasn't that way for me. I was just going along with the crowd.

My life was a little aimless at the time, and due to circumstances, it was the thing to do. If I hadn't done it, I would have been discarded by all of them, and left to fend for myself, alone…un-needed.

I suppose it would be important to say how I found myself in this current circumstance. I want to be clear, I did it willfully…no coercion, no calls from old friends from bygone days encouraging me to give it a go. The full gravity of this thing and its repercussions are on my shoulders and mine alone.

I think what made me start up again were fond memories that I now realize were not wholly realistic. Our minds do that, you know. As the years go by and the hard edges of life and past experience become softened, the explicit memories give way to a broader sense of past events.

That led to this…

So, it was that in February, after going through a six-month vetting process, I got a teaching position in the Department of Biology this fall at the local junior college – an anatomy/physiology (A&P) course to prepare future health care professionals (e.g., nurses, EMTs, physical therapists).

Oh, you thought I meant I had been peeking through windows at the local sorority or neighbor's houses. I'm sorry, I meant to say decades ago while finishing school and teaching, I was spending a lot of time ‘looking into' how our physical body's work. The gang of folks I ran with in those days were graduate and later, faculty colleagues.

In that time, there was so much to learn and no time to think about it. In school, it was ‘burn the midnight oil' to pass the test – next! In the first year of teaching,  I was barely two weeks ahead of my students!

In the fall, I’m taking on the physiology side of ‘A&P.' The reality check came pretty quickly. The warm and fuzzy feelings of classroom days gone by were quickly replaced by the sheer volume and scope of material to be taught. An undercurrent of fear began to ooze its way from a low-level discomfort to a more blatant, "What the heck were you thinking?!"

To prepare, I got the texts, a new colleague's old class notes, and collateral materials (i.e., PowerPoint presentations and a sample syllabus). The textbooks, by the way, are huge, hefty and very expensive…further, I might add, pretty content dense.

At first, I was so overwhelmed, I put the books on my desk, stored the electronic materials on my computer, sat down and just looked them. That little voice seemed a bit stronger...not "...what the heck, but WHAT THE HELL??"

The first section? The endocrine system (hormones).

At first, it was tough sledding, my brain rusty and apparently not particularly interested in getting with the program.

But as the pages unfolded and the notecards began to fill up, something inside started to change. I stopped resisting the mass of material and felt myself embracing it. It would be disingenuous to say every metabolic control and feedback loop excited me, but on balance, I began to look forward to the ways in which these seemingly disconnected hormone glands create an orchestral balance so finely tuned and elegant it’s almost breath taking.

Like Goldilocks and the three bears…too much of something gets turned down…too little, turned up…all regulated like an automatic thermostat connected to the furnace or cooling system keeping the temperature "...just right…” The medical term – homeostasis.

By now, I have worked through the hormones and Blood. An aside: Do you know each red blood cell contains over a two hundred seventy-three million oxygen binding sites, AND there are between twenty to thirty billion red blood cells in our bodies? How could you NOT be excited!! I know, I digress and need to calm down...

Next is the heart and circulation

There is a lot to review, you know to keep ahead of my students this fall, but the more I'm in the physiology, the more wondrous it has become. This time around, the material is not without a frame of reference or context. This time around there is space to meditate on the way this body interacts. Understanding it, as much as I am capable, has become fun and intriguing (if I may use that word).

Yep, this time around, peeking through the physiology and metabolic curtains of life is pretty darn rewarding.

An old high school classmate sent me a quote of encouragement from Lucius Seneca (a Roman philosopher) – "While we teach, we learn…"

Hard to argue…

- ted

Go Lightly old man...

“When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease,

that means it cannot be cured.”

­ – Anton Chekhov, Russian playwright

It all began in my fiftieth year at the urging of my wife. I had heard stories about this, but figured if I didn't think about it, or more importantly mention it, the whole idea would slip into the ether. Unfortunately, waiting in the ether was Molly – my partner and cohort for the past forty-some years. As it turns out, she wasn’t just hanging out there, she was proactive.

I am a fortunate man, in that Molly is not a nag. She doesn’t hammer away at things she thinks ‘I’ or the collective ‘we’ should be doing. She's strong, and she's smart, so I suspect her management of me is pretty much invisible. That is unless it has to do with my health. Then she can be a bear – bear-ess?

So as the mid-century mark began to creep up, a quiet narrative started to slip into our conversations. You know, "Don't you think you should consider getting a colonoscopy?" Of course, I thought nothing of the sort. Why would I consider anything like that? My weight was good. I exercised regularly, slept well, and had a healthy diet – why would I want to have a very long flexible probe poking around my…well, you know, my private nether regions.

I got it that she cared about my health, but at eight years my junior, she wouldn't need to consider this for nearly a decade. Without getting into the detail, this was a battle I was less than adequately prepared to fight. I mean, what’s the comeback when someone both loves you and has data to back them up.

What to do?

So, there I was sitting in the waiting room of my local gastroenterologist getting ready to learn about an impending, albeit unconscious, intimate experience with a man I hardly knew. There would be no getting to know him. No conversations about life and philosophy – nothing. Just a strange man looking at my hindquarters in the most benign, and dispassionate way. I suppose truth be told if it were going to happen, this is the way I would want it to be.

His nurse indicated this was a safe and common procedure the doctor had performed hundreds of times. She explained that I would need to drink a hypertonic solution called GoLytely to prepare myself for the event. “GoLytely.” Sort of rolls off your tongue with an almost a poetic lilt.

“GoLitey” is Polyethlyne Glycol, in more recent years referred to as PEG-ES. The “ES,” standing for – electrolyte solution. Kinda sounds like something you would take if you were going to be hydrating out in the desert somewhere. Water is vital to ingest, but electrolytes are essential.  In this case, of course, it could not be further from the truth. The purpose of this benign-sounding torture producing solution has nothing to do with retaining anything. On the contrary, it is intended, once started, to remain within your digestives system until the same ingested volume exits, shall we say, the other end of the alimentary canal.

To be clear polyethlyne glycol should NOT be confused with ethylene glycol, more commonly known as antifreeze. Although by the time this cleansing is finished, one might wonder whether a good dose of antifreeze might not have been better.

If you want to get a clear idea of how this stuff works – envision a dam breaking and washing away everything in its path – and I mean EVERY-THING.

The drinking solution, of course, is nothing more than preparation for the big dance itself. I have always indicated an eagerness to take all the drugs available and at their maximum dose during the actual procedure. The best thing I can say about this is that I am exceedingly glad I never had an inkling of interest in this field. I haven't even spent much time imagining what professional conversations might take place between people who do this for a living.

Yet once again…

Last week, I had the opportunity, for the fifth time, to enjoy the rigors of this procedure. I thought I had gotten the system down. The first couple of times, I scheduled it at the earliest appointment in the morning. But when the cleanse began it was early evening, meaning I got practically no sleep. I'm not the sharpest tack in the box, but after the second one, I scheduled afternoon procedures. I'd go to bed early, get a good night's sleep, rise at the crack of dawn and start the cleanse. By the time I slipped into that open-backed, pride-defeating gown, I was rested and a clean machine.

As before, I scheduled this procedure for 2:30 PM. When I received the PEG-ES, it was in two doses – one for the preceding evening and one for the day of. This was new and a surprise. The instructions indicated it was a two-stage procedure, each of which would take about five hours. Once again, by-passing the intimate detail, each cleanse lasted nearly eight hours.

As politely as I can express, I was one unhappy camper when I showed up for my 2:30 appointment with my engines still running. That having been said, the intake staff were thoughtful and patient. After being prepped, and wheeled into the procedure room, the nurse anesthetist started the haze-inducing drugs. Just before disappearing into 'la la land,' a hand shook mine and a man I had never met indicated he was the doctor doing the work. I think I mumbled something.

A silver lining…

As with previous procedures, my insides were healthy with nothing untoward to report. That, of course, delighted the instigator of these regularly scheduled interruptions in the calm waters of my life.

The best news? When I received the report, it indicated I would not need another Colonoscopy. I interpreted that as meaning I would never have to do this again. Molly? She said, since there was nothing there, they would not need to do a second procedure. It did not mean I would never need one of these in the future.

To invoke the marvelous lyric of Marvin Hamlish from A Chorus Line: 
                    "...But I can't regret what I did for love..."

Really?

- ted

The future is the past...

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.”

– Chinese proverb

The headline on the magazine cover read “Your Body at 70!”

What could be more compelling than for a guy like me to see the article header, AND be in his seventy-first year? The pre-head in smaller type indicated this was the AARP (American Association of Retired People) “Spring Health Special.”

Somewhere between 129 – 210 AD, a fellow named Galen put forth a series of what he considered healthy habits. He had been sickly in his youth, and based on the teachings of Hippocrates, he developed these habits.

   •     Good sleep,                    •   Healthy Eating

   •     Balanced Passions         •   Good Digestion

   •     Proper Exercise              •   Exposure to Clean Air

He, of course, did not have the advantage of modern scientific advice. Little doubt, years of subsequent research surely would refine these rather rustic ideas. I knew about Galen, but man, I couldn’t wait to get into that article – full title: “Your Body at 70+ - What to expect in your 70s.” 

Healthy Nirvana began on page thirty-four.

The table of contents suggested other offerings, like ‘Mellissa’s (Funny) Secret,” “Let’s go Fishing!” and “The Buddy I’ll Never Forget.”

I was mildly distracted by a piece about Lauren Hutton, a famous model/actress of yesteryear, who has a new film. Okay, I was more than mildly distracted. Ms. Hutton declared in bold print, “If you obsess about your looks, it kills your spirit.” Easy to say for someone, who at seventy-four looks like she is in her fifties. I was hoping for a little insight into her life's journey, you know, having been on the path a few years longer than me. The 'down the road' advice from her? Go see her new movie, I Feel Pretty…disappointing for someone advising not to obsess about one’s looks!!

Overcoming that brief distraction and wanting to get to that piece on things to expect in this decade, I flipped the pages. Okay, a few other things got in the way:

•      A short paragraph on the development of new hospital gowns with a box pleat in the back to avoid embarrassing exposure of one's hindquarters (who wouldn't want that).

•     A confession from Andrew Lloyd Webber that he was financially overleveraged when he produced Cats…afraid he would not be able to make his house payments (I had been worried about that).

•     How to make deviled eggs by substituting hummus or cottage cheese for mayonnaise (couldn't quite wrap my head around that).

•     Recommendations of movies meant for mature theatergoers: Stg. Stubby - An American Hero (cartoon), Deadpool 2, and Solo: A Star Wars Story…really??

None of these minor interruptions could deter me from what I knew was going to be an enlightening article dedicated to the geriatric decade I have by now fully embraced.

Well, there was that small – and as it turned out – meaningless fluff about Angela Lansbury, who is aimlessly in her nineties. Then, there was constructive advice on phone scams. Just hang up or better yet, don’t even answer.

Man, there was a lot of stuff to get through. I couldn’t stop myself, yet was tiring of things like  how to plan for an adult child's unexpected illness (Whew! We've got no kids), why I shouldn't worry about moving from making money to spending it, and fifty-four "Free Resources" for seniors. Geeze, I was only on page twenty-nine.

With apologies to Melissa McCarthy, I was afraid that if I took the time to read, “Melissa McCarthy, Actor, Comedian, Designer, Farm Girl, Mother, Daughter,” I would not have the energy to get to the "Healthy Living 2018" section, four pages later.

Forgoing the short nap my body was by now demanding, I pressed forward…climbed the mountain…and flipped the page feeling like the character described in the parable of The Cave in Plato’s Republic. I couldn’t wait to emerge from the darkness of six unenlightened decades and bask in the sunlight of advice that would guide the rest of my seventies.

It’s hard to describe how primed I was. Eyes sparkling, I took a deep breath and began.

General health was the warm-up topic. You know, the importance of optimism (less stress) and the expectation of good years to come. Yep, a good start.

Apparently, I’m twenty-six percent less likely to die of cancer (the caveat – as long as I get screened). There was a possibility that by age seventy-five I might need a pacemaker (make sure to keep that battery fresh and fully charged), and it would be good to get a dog (not sure what our cats would think of that). I was also encouraged to note that it is easier than ever to make changes in lifestyle – maybe because with a reduced capacity to do stuff, the options are fewer. This was good. I felt like I could get into this seventies groove.

From the above enlightening information, the article went on to provide stunningly relevant guidelines on how to keep my brain, senses, looks (damn you Lauren Hutton), muscles/bones, and sex life in tip-top shape. I was nodding my head and agreeing, ‘cause I was doing all the recommended things.  Okay, the head nodding was beginning to cause some mild discomfort, but what’s a little pain in the face of gushing enlightenment.

At first, being confronted with all this vital information, in easily consumable fashion, I couldn’t quite get the overview. I mean, I wasn’t seeing the new stuff. The ‘up ahead’ seemed to be a forest. I couldn’t quite discern the trees. I knew there had to be nuggets of a better future, but they seemed somehow out of reach.

Then it began to dawn on me. This ‘see what the road has in store’ had everything to do with the road I had been on for most of my adult life. The pathway was not some insight into what was in store, but continuing to live the lifestyle of decent sleep, balanced passions, proper exercise, healthy eating, proper digestion and exposure to clean air (I think the healthy sex was just a benny).

In the end, I have to say, I was hoping for a little more and yet, I was consoled by the wisdom of Solomon from the Scriptures:

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done. So, there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecc. 1:9)

The health care community has spent a lot of money and scientific effort to establish that Galen's ideas nearly two thousand years ago, were right on the money - apologies to the AARP and all those researchers.

My body at seventy?  As I slip forward into the mists of time, The thing that has been is that which shall be – you know, that’s the road ahead.

- ted