A few years ago I got together for lunch with a couple of friends I had worked with in the past. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, so it was quite the catch-up session. I drove away from that lunch with one thought in my mind, “WTF just happened there?” My friends and I (all approximately the same age) had just spent the previous 90 minutes itemizing our ailments. One had had plantar fasciitis since we’d last met up, another had been diagnosed with diverticulosis, and we all had horror stories of MRIs, or X-rays, etc… I had shared my bout of, actually, in retrospect, I may have been the one with plantar fasciitis, who knows? All I could think on that ride home was, I’m in my 50’s now – is this what it’s going to be like? Every visit with a friend a health summary like the medical segment of a Reader’s Digest magazine? So that day I swore: never again. Never again would the bulk of my conversation be taken up in a recitation of ills. It hasn’t been easy; since that get together, whenever one person mentions a doctor’s appointment, or an ache or pain, I try to find a way to introduce a new topic. It can be anything, the Faroe Islands, or Princess Charlotte’s new coat, or the price of Grand Marnier at the LCBO, anything but old people’s ailments.
And yet, if I were to start at the top of my head, and work my way south, I could come up with a myriad of over-50 failings: from insomnia, to failing memory, to tinnitus, to weakened eyesight, to hiatus hernia, to, well, you get the idea – I could be a poster child for the aging and the angry.
Which leads me to this week: trochanteric bursitis. Last week I badly bruised the toes on my left foot (I am so my mother’s daughter). But since there’s nothing you can really do for toes, and the weather was nice, I just kept walking. Unfortunately, that led to a whole new problem – clearly the limping was irritating and aggravating my right hip. I thought the best thing would be to keep walking, to keep it loose and to stay active. I took Scout for her morning walks in the sunshine; my walking group went for a much-longer-then-usual walk to see a new park that was opening; and I just generally kept moving.
Well that was stupid. By Tuesday I was in agony, a walk from the library to the post office (90 seconds on a good day) took 12 minutes, and I even woke myself up one night crying from the pain. I went online and yup, it was something I had had once before, bursitis. And the immediate treatment for a bursitis flare-up? RICE: rest, ice, compression, and elevation (well that last one is more for knee or ankle; I don’t think lying with one’s bum in the air is part of the recommended treatment); I needed rest, not movement. So instead of keeping it moving and loose, I should have been sitting quietly, applying Voltarol, and taking ibuprofen. Then, once the inflammation has subsided, one should introduce a series of gentle stretches, and then, and only then, start walking.
So, I arranged for Scout’s dog-walker to come each morning, I took to the sofa, and as people came through to view the house with the realtor, I lay back and tried to look helpless (as opposed to lazy).
Well, it’s working – slept like a log last night, and walking around the house no longer has me screaming in pain. Yes, I have reverted to whining about my health. Sorry about that. And it looks like Scout is enjoying her walks with her new friend, Breya. (Seriously, she seems to be well over her fear of water, doesn’t she?)
