I refer to my body in the third person, because we are no longer on speaking terms, my body and me. Our relationship has become similar to that of an old married couple: my body is angry with me for some reason that I cannot discern, and no matter how many doctors I consult, my body still isn't giving up the goods in the form of presenting a fixable problem (or, again akin to a long-suffering spouse, an improvable problem -- I'll take what I can get at this point).
Furthermore, as I prepare to start my fifth decade on this planet, I find that I get little sympathy from my fellow humans who have already passed this milestone. All along, I've been told by them, "Just wait. It only gets worse!"
Well, aside from taking their advice with a huge grain of salt -- respecting my elders, and all that -- I thought I would do my best to try to stave off the ravages of Time in whatever way I could.
I exercise. I run and swim and hike in the summer; in the winter, I haul my sorry butt either up a mountain just to ski back down, or across a mountain range on cross-country skis.... AND swim. Go ahead and throw some yoga in there, as well.
I eat right. -- OK, "right" is a strong word here. Let's not go overboard. But in my defense, I eat a far greater proportion of vegetables and grains, maybe a lean meat or fish occasionally, than I do refined sugars (Mmmmm, coooooookiieeeeeeeessss!!!).
I sleep my eight hours a day. Sometimes not all at once, but there's an irreplaceable soul-satisfying component to mid-afternoon dog naps that isn't covered by traditional overnight sleeps.
I see a doctor regularly, obediently holding my breath and smashing my breasts between plexiglass plates once a year. I have my cholesterol checked ("Yep, still high -- Let's check again next year."). My body weight has wavered only about five pounds in the last twenty years or so. (Of course, as an American woman, I'm always struggling to lose those Last Five Pounds [LFP], which shows that sometimes wisdom and aging do not necessarily go hand in hand.)
Ever the scientist, I can't help but wonder what's happening to my body in the parallel universe, where I didn't bother trying to take care of myself and just sat around watching TV and eating bonbons. Alas, my life is not an episode of Fringe (though it does, at times, bear more than a passing resemblance), so I'll never know.
But what I do know is that, in spite of my best efforts, my body is betraying me as I get older. For no good reason.
My first brush with an Unfixable Problem was about ten years ago with some suspected food allergy issues -- I say "suspected," because in spite of being looked at inside and out (Word of Advice: Drinking the Go-Lytely sitting on the toilet; you'll never make it from the kitchen), I was normal normal normal, healthy healthy healthy. The doctors said there was nothing more they could do and wished me good luck. So, with some self-sleuthing, that problem is better but still not fixed.
Most recently, however -- let's say the past five years -- my body has come resemble a old jalopy trundling down the road: suddenly, a hubcap goes flying off into the ditch. Or the muffler falls off. Or there's a persistent little squeaking noise coming from the dashboard that doesn't seem associated with any problem per se, but you can't seem to figure out what's causing it or get it to stop squeaking, either.
It started a few years ago as a mild hip pain that plagued my running. No big deal, I probably strained something, right? Of course, in the way of an aging body, there's no particular event that occurred -- it's not as if I tripped and fell -- suddenly one day the pain was just... there. So I experimented with a few self-fixes, I mean, I am a doctor, after all: rest, gentle stretching, some strengthening exercises, different running shoes, running flats instead of hilly trails,.... Nope. Now it's a sharp shooting pain.
So now I think what all doctors think when the pain doesn't go away: Oh god, I have cancer.
Time to see a doctor who isn't me.
Skip to the end: A year of physical therapy doesn't help or even diagnose the problem. It could be this or that, these exercises might help or they might not. You might need surgery, or maybe just Advil ... for the rest of your life.
Well, the medical profession did little to earn my confidence, so I just chalked it up to age. It got better for about a year, now it's back. So now I've had two fairly serious health issues which have come about with no discernible cause, which have been thoroughly worked up, and which have failed to resolve or even, really, improve.
However, the current #1 on my Body Breakdown list is some lower spine problem, and you'd have to either live in a cave or be younger than thirty years old -- probably both -- to not understand right away how difficult and complex that issue can be! For the past four months, I've been waking up in the morning with lower back spasm that hurts so badly, I'm afraid if I move I'll end up paralyzed.
So of course, there must be a cause, right? Fell off the roof? Tried to lift a horse? No??
Near as I can figure, the closest I can come to naming a culprit is one of the two following coincident events:
And:
2) The Wild Thing -- To this day, I still don't understand what place a pose called "the wild thing" has in any yoga class, but how could I possible refuse to at least try to convert my adapted Half-Moon pose into something called the Wild Thing? Just by trying the Wild Thing, my mind was instantly transported back to fond memories of my bleach-blonde wild child self showing up in tank top and cut-offs, drinking a beer, for her high school graduation (Good thing I wasn't Valedictorian, eh?). Alas, my body elected not to follow my mind and chose instead to stay put and accept reality, also known as pain.
Still, it's not as if I woke up the next morning after yoga class with the pain, nothing so straightforward as that. Just a persistent low-grade pain that occurs every single night for the last four months.
So now I have the hallmark of middle age: a back problem. And so far, no one can tell me what I'm supposed to do about it. The doctors and radiologists agree it's common "at your age," but if it's so common then give me some good advice!
Do I keep running, or stop? Swimming? Strength training, or rest?
Of course, what's at the bottom of all this isn't my back problem. It's the betrayal.
My back problem is only the most recent betrayal my body has impinged on me in the past ten years. It's the sum tally that's aggravating: sprained left wrist, twisted left ankle, right knee pain, right hip pain, hand-cramping, ... Surely, some of those should be traceable to a specific event? Nope. They seem to be on their own schedule, like a timing belt at sixty-thousand miles. Replace it, or risk a breakdown. Doesn't matter whether you've been driving the car like Mario Andretti or a little old lady from Pasadena, it just happens.
I'm willing to take my lumps for something I've done -- A bigger ski day than I trained for, a longer run in cold weather, etc. -- but what I truly resent is this slow steady crawl toward the junkyard as pieces and parts start to break down without any real hope of ever being completely back to "normal" again.
Gone are the days when my body was carefree -- nimble and limber and oh-so-forgiving for minor transgressions. Flew over the handlebars on your mountain bike yesterday? That's OK, you'll be good as new by tomorrow morning!
Ultimately, I realize Someone out there is laughing at me. I can't tell if it's old Father Time, with his hourglass, counting his grains of sand. Or maybe it's my grandparents, whose factory worker lifestyle must surely have led to more aches and pains than I can possibly imagine. Or maybe it's some third-world farmer who's never even heard of yoga, much less "the wild thing" pose.
Maybe it's Future Me, shaking her head and imagining how on earth I'm gonna respond to the changes in the years ahead. Because I'm sure my elders are right on this one: "It only gets worse."
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