The Agony of "It's Just Old Age"

 I think I have talked briefly before about how seeing family age and wither away has been a huge motivator for my running and seeking better overall health as I stare down middle age in the not too distant future. I have also talked about how I seek out stories of seniors that are beating the odds when it comes to avoiding the rust that often sets in when they sit in the chair in their living room, or the front porch. There are so many stories out there when you start looking and paying attention and they are so inspiring! No matter what age you choose to start, as long as you are still breathing, it seems your body and health can improve.

 Researchers that actually study senior citizens and health improvement beyond taking pills are proving this more and more. The unfortunate thing is that studies have been slow to occur in this field because there isn't a whole lot of money in this area but with the ever aging population and the strain that this is going to be on governments that are taking on more and more of these elderly patients with longer life spans due to medical interventions, people are waking up and admitting there needs to be a better way.

 I was a lucky kid in that I grew up in a home with not just one grandma, but two. Starting at the age of six, I lived with both my grandma and my great grandma.

 Looking back to my earliest memory of my great grandma, I see her sitting in her chair. Four different houses over the years and the scene never changes. When she walked, she shuffled from one place to another and I can still hear the sound her slippers made against the wood floors. Her back had what my grandma, her daughter, called the "widow's hump." I have a picture of her from her high school days of her and her girls' baseball team. This sort of shocked me when I first saw it. An image of my grandma as a young woman, running and playing a sport, is hard for me to imagine.
 
 When she died in her late 80's, in a nursing home once she needed 24 hour care, my family was told by the doctor in the nursing home that she was on so many pills she was almost a drug addict, along with suffering from type 2 diabetes.

 I think of her final years, sitting in her chair, watching her t.v programs, waiting for the mail or one of her grandkids to play a card game with her, and I am sad for her.

  Now her daughter, my other grandma, is continuing on her same path. We get into weekly discussions on her aches and pains. She laments to me on how she will need a wheelchair at the airport when she comes to visit us because the distance between the terminals and the security check point are so long.

 She is suffering from arthritis in her shoulders and she is convinced it is from her high school years of twirling baton. She tells me my running will ruin my knees and when I told her I completed a half marathon her response was simply "Oh my god." Her belief is that exercise will eventually lead to pain and bodily damage in the end.

 Nana, I tell her, you have got to move, you have to go for a walk everyday, lift some one pound weights to which she responds, "Oh, honey, this is just old age."

 She won't listen when I talk to her about the research proving that activity is the best treatment for her arthritis, instead she downs Aleve on a daily basis.

 I am not in her doctors' offices with her, so of course I am not sure what they are prescribing for her aches and pains, it is highly possible they are trying to encourage her to get up and move. She has no major injuries or disorders to prevent this, but if they aren't, I really wish they would! 

 I wish we would get past this idea that old age equals lack of ability to move, the necessity for motorize carts at the grocery store and a hurry cane.

 There is a common phrase used among the horse rescue community that "old age doesn't equal skinny!" it is an attempt to dispel the myth that once a horse hits their late teens and into their 20's that being skinny is just part and parcel of being an old horse when in actuality, being underweight does mean is that he most likely has dental issues that need to be taken care of, or an overload of parasites. Sway backs are a symptom of being ridden with the horse in an improper carriage, with a high head, hollowed back and abs not engaged and carrying the horse, again, not a sign of old age.

 I wish that we could make it a campaign to dispel the myth of old age in humans equaling the inability to walk from one end of a shopping mall to the next.

 I don't want my boys to fear old age, I want them to see their mom and dad hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and running ultra marathoners long into their "twilight" years (and while we're at it can we get rid of that phrase, too!)

 Now just to get my husband on the same page.