THE GATE TO OLD AGE
I have a college classmate, a sometime Benson resident, who is a sculptor known for creating gates. Not the garden gate kind, but stand-alone portals more to areas of meaning that physical territory. The next time I see him or contact him, I’m going to suggest a Gate to Old Age: the crosspiece would be the human skeleton’s pelvic area, including both hips, and the support would be two crutches instead of legs.
The biggest reason I haven’t been blogging more often this year is my back—or at least I thought it was my back. Anyone who has seen me limping and gimping around, hitching and hobbling like an old farmer dragging himself to Town Meeting, knows what I’m talking about. In a hundred ways, it keeps me from going the extra step to get things done, and they pile up, sometimes literally, especially in a small office. Mine is about nine feet square; for two days now I’ve been trying to get to the other side of it, and I’m not there yet.
I went to Brandon chiropractic doctor Chuck Foster, who has always been able to help me with my back, and this time the adjustment lasted about 100 feet from the office door and BANG the pain was back. It wasn’t his fault, though, as I found out last week from Dr. Eric Benz here in Middlebury, a back specialist.
X-rays showed the back to be a bit twisted out of line, but not too bad. The hips, on the other hand, were shot. Massive arthritis, so bad there wasn’t any gap at all between the ball and socket in the joint, just fuzzy white. “It’s sort of a good news-bad news thing,” he said, beginning a summation that ended with “You need two hip replacements.”
I answered, “In other words, hip hip, but no hooray?”
I had heard of them, but had never thought much about them, because that was for old people. Old? By next year, when it will be possible to take the time to have them (winter is coming too fast to do it now), I’ll be 62, and eligible for Social Security.
It isn’t the whole hip that gets replaced, it’s the ball part of the ball-and-socket joint. I tell my covered bridge acquaintances (I wrote a book called Covered Bridges of Vermont) “I’m afraid I need a little Glulam,” that being an artificial wood product that covered bridge preservationists want to keep out of the wooden bridges as much as possible.
On the good side (aside from not needing back surgery), Benz said it’s his favorite operation, because almost always it goes well and gives the person a whole new life. Son Damon, now operations manager at the First Avenue music club in Minneapolis, emailed back “That good about your back, but whack about your hip, pop. At least once it's over and done with, you'll be able to move about relatively pain free, right?” Brother Joe, a year younger, replied “Sorry to hear it, but I do know that it is one of the few operations I know of where
everyone seems to have no problems and ends up extremely happy with the results. Keep me posted on plans. Maybe my gall bladder removal will end up being at the same time!”
There’s a song by Rambling Jack Elliott that has the refrain “Arthritis is the thing to miss—it will leave you walking with a double twist. And it’s all kinds of trouble gonna find you somehow.” It’s almost 5 a.m., maybe the acetominophen has started to work, and maybe it will do better than the megaibuprofen that’s been prescribed, so that I could get at least a few hours of decent sleep.
Good luck with yours, Mrs. Calabash, whatever it is.
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