Another Day in the Country
Going downhill
© Another Day in the Country
The thing I’ve dreaded most about aging is the “going downhill” phenomenon.
It isn’t good news: the look in people’s eyes when they lower their voice, look away discretely, and say to a person next to them, “I’m afraid she’s going downhill.”
Going downhill, it seems to me, should be and always has been a joyous thing.
Riding a bike, for instance. There’s nothing quite as great as going downhill. It’s like flying. You might have exhausted yourself climbing that hill, but the minute you hit the crest, it’s free sailing — exhilarating and so much fun.
I still love driving long, straight Kansas roads, where you can see rolling hills coming in the distance.
When we’d come over the crest of a hill, my dad would speed up so that coming down the other side was so exciting your heart dropped deliciously into the pit of your stomach and you had to catch your breath.
How did going downhill get associated with dying?
Throughout my life, I’ve been pretty careful with my body. I was raised with the notion that the body is sacred, and because it houses the breath of life, it’s synonymous with an indwelling holiness and so should be treated with great respect.
Maybe because of that upbringing, good genetics, or luck, I haven’t had much sickness, no traumatic illness, only one minor broken bone. My immune system is miraculous, and I give thanks that bodies heal and repair themselves every day.
Then, January came around, and things changed. They weren’t big things, but I knew my body was battling something. Some disease definitely was cropping up, and the location seemed to move around.
One week it would be my lungs. That wasn’t anything new; asthma runs in our family. We know what to do to help it heal.
Then, suddenly, something was wrong somewhere else.
There were carpal tunnel problems — something I’d never had in my life. I hadn’t been on a computer and couldn’t figure out any logical reason why suddenly my wrists were painful, swollen, and didn’t work. Of course, I Googled it.
Wrists! We should give thanks for those little hinges every hour on the hour. When wrists stop functioning, 90% of your freedom is gone. Wrists are even more vital than knees in my book.
At times like these, I rustle up every natural remedy I know of — giving my wrists support, cold packs, and massage, trying to figure out what I have done to cause this malady.
Thankfully, slowly, the wrists got better.
How many weeks are in three months? Twelve! And every week or so there was something new happening in my body.
Early on, I wondered if it was COVID, but I tested, and it wasn’t. Was I going downhill?
For sure, it didn’t feel like after you’d hiked up a hill and now could go down an incline. That would be a relief.
This succession of weeks felt more like a long slog, and just about the time I thought I could see light at the end of the tunnel, the power would go down.
During this three-month siege of strange maladies, I gathered tools to help me cope.
I felt like a walking first-aid kit. Already I carried oversized bandages and disinfectant in case some tree branch, riser at a ballgame, or shopping cart touched me just the wrong way and barked off my fragile skin.
I already had an inhaler that goes wherever I go, but now I also had a nebulizer at my house, cold packs and wrist braces, ibuprofen, Ace bandages, and long-sleeved shirts.
I was telling a friend who is a trained acupuncturist about the perplexing set of maladies I’d been dealing with.
“Something is triggering infections in different parts of my body,” I said. “I don’t understand it. Is this just old age catching up with me? Is this what I should expect from here on out?”
“In Chinese medicine,” Willow replied, “they say that your immune system is like a powerful dragon coming to your rescue. Let’s call upon that in our session today.”
A couple of days later, I had an appointment with my favorite dentist for some minor procedure.
When I arrived, he said, “Bad news. Your X-rays show that your root canal is infected, and that tooth needs to be removed.”
Instead of being chagrined, I was excited.
Could that be the explanation for all the weird things that have been happening to me?
Sure enough, all the pesky maladies, the omnipresent aches and pains surfacing at random, stopped once that infected tooth was gone.
I’d never dreamed that an infected tooth could be so powerful. It hadn’t even registered that I still had one root canal in my mouth. No nerves in the tooth meant no toothache warning me something was very wrong.
I’ve told you this long, meandering tale to encourage you all to take care of your teeth.
So many times, especially as we age, our teeth get neglected. I didn’t grow up flossing. That’s been the hardest habit to establish. I brush every day, but it’s a new concept to brush more than once a day and a new skill to get flossing down — all something my grandson does without prompting as part of his routine on another day in the country.