Looking Back

I just turned eighty recently. For many people, this is a celebration of a life well lived, or at least a life lived. For me it was a mixed blessing. I took no relish in reaching this august achievement. I could feel the age in my paralytic bones, so to speak, and I had reached a turning point in my life. Or should I say in my work life. My family life was excellent but I had lost all enthusiasm or inspiration for useful or creative work. Work, mostly writing TV shows and books and essays, is what got me through and kept me sane for the last twenty-nine years of paralysis. Writing gave me a place in the world and didn’t require the lower half of my body.

For the first time in my paralytic life, I didn’t feel like doing it.

A big part of the reason for this malaise, and a major daily distraction, is my health. On three separate occasions in the last few months, I have been hospitalized because of infections, some of them reaching the level of early-stage sepsis and some of them having nothing to do with the paralysis. One infectious episode led to a bone disease in my hip called osteomyelitis. Forty-five days of daily IV infusions at home cleared up that mess -- we hope -- but either the infection or antibiotics gave me a prolonged case of brain fog.

In probably a normal shift among octogenarians, your health becomes your job. The rest of life happens after that. There are home care visits, doctor visits, hospital visits. It’s a pretty full calendar. No wonder I haven’t been at my computer working away. Although the mental drifting began before these recent medical problems, they certainly take a lot of time and energy away from anything else. It’s a little like being in a hospital full time. You adapt to the 24-hour interruptions and the occasional trips down to the CT department. You still have enough free time to write “War and Peace” but you’d have to muster more motivation than you might have lying in that bed all day, or at least that I have.

Here’s what I’ve learned in the early days of my 80’s. One, the older you get, the slower you go. This is not a joke, like a comic caricature on TV. You should slow down and be ever alert to the hazards of long term paralysis, not to mention old age itself. You will minimize falling, the often-fatal bane of wheelchair users. Slow is good, indicating not a lack of energy but an increase in be-here-now mindfulness.

I’ve also learned that aging with paralysis doesn’t get easier and continuing to deal with all the inherent problems for years on end can be exhausting and depressing, at times, very depressing. If you take every precaution possible, like dealing with contracture early or catching every pressure sore before the skin breaks, then you may be okay. In other words, look ahead ten years. Unfortunately, I still get a C minus in all the lessons of good paralytic health, either physical or mental. Also, when you age, stuff happens to your body that you have nothing to do with. Learn to roll with it, if you can, no pun intended.

But soon this drifting period will pass and I will again embrace the life I’ve been given, with a loving family and friends and a still-functioning brain. I have enough natural curiosity to land on a new area of creative pursuit and keep on going.

And, hopefully, cancel the home care visits. 

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