Coping and Traveling

First, I want to thank the people, those whom I know and those whom I don't, who expressed support and concern for my wife.  Although she is still a bit stunned and a bit pissed off that she is afflicted with this, she is paying very close attention to doing what she should be doing, as she usually does, and there have been good results from doing this.  She does seem healthier and more stable.  There is more to do, but progress is being made.

A while before the diagnosis was made we had planned to take the trip we are on now.  We know that Spring comes late in New England so we came South, in part to visit friends who are down here, and then relax for a few days  here where it is warm, friendly and beautiful, even if the food  is too rich.

But what becomes clearer every day, from seeing my friends and hearing their stories as they relate to my wife, is that getting old kinda sucks. Right now I feel pretty good, and think of myself as fit and flexible. In my head I am the same as I was thirty years ago when I was playing basketball once or twice a week.  However, if I make the mistake of looking in a mirror, or trying to run and jump, it becomes very clear how different I am from how I was then. Also, one of my good friends can barely move his legs, another just had a second heart attack, a third cannot eat anything with fat. A fourth is having both knees replaced this summer.  We even have a couple of friends who clearly are not as mentally sharp as they were ten years ago.  On and on and on.

Psychologically, it isn't easy, and in some ways denial is the best strategy, except when there are measures that can, and need to be taken.  But within the pretty near future most of my friends and I will all be seventy years-old and then it will be tougher to still think of ourselves as just " middle age."