A shopping trip

I had to take Peggy to the airport at 4:30 this morning, so, hating crowded stores as I do, I went grocery shopping on the way home. The main aisle of the store was crowded with young male stockers pushing large dollies. I watched in awe as they joked with one another while lifting heavy boxes, and I thought about how recently I could have done the same and how much I took it for granted. I recalled working on a roof one day when I was their age, and my employer/helper was in his sixties. Out of the blue, he paused and watched me for a long moment, and then he said, “You are a master, and I’m a past-master.” So did it seem to me today as I watched those young men. What was easy has become hard, and what was hard has become impossible. I used to do bicep curls with 45-pound dumbbells, and that was easier then than lifting a 30-pound bag of cat litter was this morning. How can it be that so much of my strength is gone, and I can’t get it back? Walking hurts my knees, exercise that helps my back hurts my shoulders, exercise that helps my shoulders hurts my back, and each of my two kinds of sleep apnea just keep getting worse, as does my memory if not my intelligence. I am made ever incredulous by my decline. Yet, as I watched those young men, I felt equally incredulous that in four decades, many of them will be as I am now. After all, they looked like gods, and gods are eternal.

When I took karate, I was impressed by tales of aged karate masters who had vanquished gangs of young hoodlums. I believed at the time that all ails could be remedied with diet, determination, and exercise, and that age itself could be postponed indefinitely. Now, I know the extent to which bad luck can overpower strength, and age can overpower anything. Still, it was hard for me this morning to believe it for those young men, just as it’s still hard to believe it for myself. I keep hoping that I will find a way to improve my situation, yet the years bring only decline. Despite my best efforts, I can’t turn it around, and the pills I take to ease the pain will almost surely shorten my life.

My friend, Gordon, died this year at 87. I remember him best for looking me in the eye with the haunted look of the Ancient Marnier as he said, time and again, “Old age ain’t for sissies.” I considered his warning trite, and got tired of hearing it, yet he said it with an earnestness that left no doubt but what the realization was eternally fresh in his mind, which I’m sure it was as he became ever more tormented by his failing body. Just as he never adjusted to his decline, so might it be for me, yet I have another friend who’s 94, and while he says he’s bothered by the fact that he can no longer do much of anything, I never see him but what he seems happy. I ask myself what he has to be happy about when all he can do is sit in a chair and watch TV. My best guess is that (a) he’s simply wired that way, and (b) unlike Gordon, he isn’t in pain, pain having the ability rob anything of enjoyment. I can not tell you what a burden it is in my life, yet I’m ever aware that there’s no law that says it can’t get even worse (it almost surely will), but there is a law that says narcotics can suddenly stop working. Oh, but how I dread that day.

* I wasn't so young in the photo, being 43 at the time, but it seemed appropriate since I was mugging for the camera. The picture was taken at a hot spring in Oregon's Alvord Desert.

"And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death." Shakespeare

I can’t save that which I love; I can but ameliorate the damage for a short time even while knowing that I myself am sometimes the cause of that damage. For instance, no one has hurt Peggy more than I, yet I am the very person most devoted to her welfare. If I have damaged other people less, it was only due to the emotional distance that separated us, for I have often been needy even while taking a hard line. I wish I could have been warmer, more caring, yet I imagined at the time that I had given them all things good, and that it was they who had failed me.

I awakened just now pondering one such instance that has haunted me for 38 years. It concerned a friend who often brought me small gifts. One night, soon after giving me such a gift—I have forgotten what—he said that it would be nice if I sometimes got him something. I became outraged and accused him of only buying things for me so that he might get things in return. I later realized that this was a hard line indeed, but maybe I believed it at the time. As with the form of his gift, my interpretation of his words has been lost; I only remember that he had made me happy with a gift and then taken away my happiness with a complaint. We both could have spoken better, but what haunts me is not the feeling he expressed, which was reasonable, but my response, which was unconscionable. We remained distant for five years, and he died a possible suicide soon after we rekindled our friendship. Long reflection upon incidents that I never imagined I would remember has shown me that, where I was a victim, it was often to my own petulance and obstinance. I didn't realize how soon I would run out of time to grow-up and set things right, or how quickly my life would be littered with corpses for whom my remorse is meaningless.

Last week, I went to a Harvard-trained Korean neurologist who has honors and credentials out the ying-yang. We discussed two issues. One is a hellacious tingling from behind my right shoulder to the thumb of my right hand, and the other is my failing memory. He told me that the tingling originates in my fifth cervical vertebra, which I killed (literally) several years ago while taking Yoga in a failed attempt to alleviate the pain in my shoulders. As for my memory, he said that it isn’t bad enough to be labeled Alzheimer’s, but that it’s bad enough to suggest a 10% chance that it will progress to Alzheimer’s within five years. I reminded myself that pain, stress, depression, and drugs all have an adverse effect upon memory, that some such changes are reversible, and that it’s often unwise to put much stock in a diagnosis that appears to have been hastily made. He ordered an MRI of my neck and drew six vials of blood, half of which were immediately wrapped in tin foil. I won’t see him again for two weeks, but I went online tonight and got the results of the blood tests. One of my abnormal results is rare in the absence of liver disease, but then again, it sometimes indicates a disease of the nervous system or connective tissue. As with spot diagnoses, I know that it’s unwise to put faith into one test once done, yet the result is consistent with my increasing worries about my liver and kidneys due to the years that I’ve taken strong drugs daily for pain. In fact, I am awake now because of pain. The night being half over, I would ordinarily take an Ambien (narcotics keep me awake), and it would enable me to doze in and out a little, but because I’m determined to take fewer drugs, I’m unwilling to allow myself to take anything.

What with these concerns about dementia, liver failure, my customary pain (which, without the pills, seems to be enveloping my entire body), and my more recent tingling, I’m finding it harder than usual to maintain a positive outlook. I regret this for my sake, but also for the sake of those people who care about me, particularly Peggy. Even with all that I’ve gone through, I never lost sight of the fact that I was still able to bring a measure of good to her life, and I worry that this might not continue. If it doesn’t, I would be left without a viable option, a thought that brings me back to where I started this post. Not only can I not save the person I love most; the worst pain she will ever have might befall her because she loves me. I can but do my best to spare her as much of it as possible.

Check-in

A 2007 photo from where we camped

last night at the end of a logging road.

First, I want you to know that I haven’t been posting or visiting blogs much lately because I’ve been busy on my summer work-list (paint the computer room; build and roof a deck; replace flooring in kitchen, den, computer room, living room, and laundry room; build a shed; replace edging along house; replace paneling between garage doors). Now...

Peggy climbed nearby 7,144' Fuji Mtn for the

14^th time yesterday (photo from 2007).

Hiking and camping in our van was a major part of our lives until my knees went out, at which point we bought folding bikes that we could carry in the van. Then, my shoulders went out, and I couldn’t camp either. Last summer (after not going for years), we made one camping trip, and we’ve made two trips this year, last night being the second. Both times, I hurt too much to sleep for more than a few hours, it being harder to control pain when camping.  

Black Butte or, as a Southerner

called it, Black Butt.

This morning, Peggy woke up with her weekly three-day migraine, and since she had forgotten her migraine pills, we came home. I felt a little about this because my wrist was hurting too much to bike. Peggy usually drives, but I drove today and couldn’t keep my hands from “going to sleep” on the steering wheel. This was no surprise because since I’ve started doing projects again, my shoulders don’t just hurt, they also itch and tingle right down to my hands. If money was as common as the clover in my yard, I would go to a neurologist, but after seeing more doctors and physical therapists than I can remember, plus having three surgeries with multi-year recoveries, all for little benefit, I’m not encouraged to burn through tens of thousands of dollars more unless things get so bad that I have no choice, as they seem to be doing. 

Some High Cascade volcanoes. Raynauds 
has made winter camping impossible.

Another thing that makes camping difficult is that I have Raynauds Disease, so my fingers turn white and lose feeling and function if they get the least bit chilled, and mornings here are chilly even in summer. Then there’s the fact that I don’t dare sleep without a CPAP (especially with all the drugs I take), and this means hauling a 12-volt battery, a charger, a converter, eight feet of tubing, and a CPAP mask on our camping trips. I also take headgear to keep my mouth shut so I don’t drool (what with all the drugs), a balaclava to go over the headgear so the CPAP mask won’t rub my face raw, and a toothguard so I won’t grind my teeth. On this trip, I even threw in a wrist brace because my wrist has been hurting ever since I “slept” atop my arm two weeks ago.

This photo was taken near a ghost town,

complete with abandoned mine shafts.

If we camped in regular campgrounds, we could buy a regular camper in order to make hauling things easier (we’re so crowded that we carry the bikes on the bed) and our bed cushier, but we don’t camp in regular campgrounds. We camp down “roads” that are rough, narrow, partly overgrown, and partially collapsed. Sometimes, they’re totally overgrown or have fallen completely off a mountainside. We carry loppers, a handaxe, a shovel, and two saws, for such road challenges as we can overcome.

When we were ordering our bikes ten years ago, a couple in their seventies came in to pick up their new custom-made tandem. They had been avid bikers for decades, but the man contracted Parkinsons and could no longer balance himself on a bicycle. He and his wife figured he could still bike if she were balancing him on a tandem, but he was very unhappy about it. I felt sorry for his wife as I watched him destroy whatever joy she might have felt when their shiny new bike was rolled out. I also thought that a man who could afford twelve-grand for a bicycle might manage to show appreciation for his wealth, as well as for having a wife who was willing to put herself at risk so he could continue biking, and for the fact that he was a lot better off than millions of people his age who sit around nursing homes in wheelchairs mumbling and peeing on themselves.

Beautiful scenery close to home

is commonplace in Oregon.

So it is that if I have to give up camping once and for all, I will try to remember that I can still do a lot. I can bike, bake; do yard work; do almost anything that needs doing to a house; plus, I can botanize and geologize. Yet, when I can’t camp, it will be a loss that I can ill afford because nothing I have ever done has given me so much pleasure as taking off to the woods every week or two with Peggy and the dogs. Now, the dogs are dead, and I feel like I’m slowly being lowered into my own hole. Sure, I can make day trips, but the quality of being in the woods for a few hours doesn’t compare to staying overnight, and even if I somehow find a way to stay for just one night at a time (while writing this, I ordered a new mattress for the van), I won’t be able to visit many of the places I’ve treasured or see many of the sites I’ve cherished. 

I love camping above clouds. We awakened in clouds

today, but dropped below them on the way home.