Thoughts on Turning 80

I miss having this pony tail. I’ve decided to re-grow it!

I turned 80 years old on January 23, 2023. I’ve gone my whole life not expecting to live beyond 79. Both my father and my mother died at age 79 (in different years). My Dad died of congestive heart failure. He had been suffering from various heart ailments for quite some time. Before his death my Dad went through two separate coronary artery bypass surgeries. The first one was when he was in his 60’s. That surgery went quite well and my father recovered from it fully and reasonably quickly. The second open-heart surgery was done when my father was in his early 70’s. At first, when his cardiologist recommended a second open-heart surgery, my Dad had decided not to do it. I thought that was the correct decision. My Dad was not aging well. He was suffering from dementia which had already progressed to a significant point. Not only was his memory failing, but he was undergoing a personality change that was not at all complimentary. My mother was pretty much taking care of all of my Dad’s needs. Due to my work I was not living nearby and discussions with my parents were perhaps once a week at best. Somewhere in that time frame my Dad changed his mind about that second open-heart surgery. I don’t know if that change of heart (no pun intended) happened on his own, or if someone (my mother?) encouraged my Dad to go through with it. I never asked my mother why the decision not to have the surgery had been changed. None-the-less a second coronary artery bypass surgery was performed, and recovery from this second open-heart surgery was much more difficult. My Dad’s quality of life declined considerably after that second heart surgery. The demands on my mother as a full-time care-taker for my Dad, combined with my father’s difficult and worsening personality change, and further combined with my mother’s rather heavy alcohol consumption eventually resulted in my mother attempting suicide. That’s a whole story in itself that I won’t go into here. Fortunately my mother survived this attempt on her life, and she continued to care for my Dad until his dying day. He died at age 79 in 1991.

As I said at the outset, my mother was also 79 when she died. About a year before she passed my mother had been diagnosed with colon cancer. I had the chance to meet with my mother’s gastroenterologist on a visit home shortly after that cancer diagnosis. On that visit I learned that my mother flately refused to consider any cancer treatment. The gastroenterologist informed me that my mother’s prognosis was quite good if treatment were initiated soon. But my mother wouldn’t consider it. She refused even to meet with an oncologist. The gastroenterologist assurred me he had done all he could to persuade my mother to enter into treatment but all of his entreties had failed. I got the distinct impression he wished that he wasn’t my mother’s physician.. My mother made me promise to keep this diagnosis a secret. She told her sisters that she was diagnosed with “chronic fatigue syndrome”. As the months went by and my mother’s condition worsened, she eventually realized that she couldn’t keep her condition a secret from her sisters any longer. However, my mother demanded that I be the one to let her sisters know what was wrong with her. I remember that conversation as if it were yesterday. My mother had three sisters, one biological sister and two step sisters as the result of my mother and her sister having been adopted by family relatives when they were infants. The story of that adoption is interesting, but I’ll save that story for another day. The “terminal cancer” conversation with my mother’s sisters was really tough. Rose, my mother’s biological sister was beside herself with grief. Annette, one of the step sisters was tremendously angry with my mother for refusing treatment, and reminded my mother how angry she was with her whenever the opportunity arose. Shortly after that, my mother’s condition worsened to the point that she needed around-the-clock care and so her sister Rose moved in with her. When it became apparent the end was nearing, I was called and immediately I flew in. This was in January, 1997. I was engaged to be married with a wedding planned for 2 months hence. Wicca, my fiance, also came to assist. We arrived to be with my mom on January 1st and she died on January 3rd. Her dying was painful and protracted. Eventually, and thankfully, my mother fell into a coma that lasted a full 24 hours before she finally passed away.

So, with neither of my parents reaching 80 years of age, it seemed reasonable to speculate that I wouldn’t either. I’ve been to my gastroenterologist and to my cardiologist regularly. I do have high blood pressure that is under adequate treatment, but my heart seems healthy, and every colonoscopy has come back negative for cancer cells. If I’m being completely honest with myself, I have worried much more about the possibility of my suffering from dementia like my father did then I have worried about death from heart disease or colon cancer. I watched my Dad’s mental faculties decline and his personality change from friendly and outgoing to constant anger and resentment. Believe me, it was not pretty. I really wouldn’t want to force my wife and children to have to suffer through that. I can tell that I don’t have the quality of memory today that I had when I was younger, but the decline has not been severe, and most importantly, I have not noticed any adverse changes in my personality. I’ve gotten old and that’s not fun, but the dementia that I have worried about as I’ve aged has not materialized. I am very thankful for that.

As I said, it’s not fun getting old. I had a pretty rough time psychologically dealing with retirement. For much of my adult life I was an educator and a college administrator. I am an optometist by training and I spent many years training future eyecare providers. Eventually I was hired to be the Director of Clinical Examinations for the National Board of Examiners in Optometry. That is the reason I moved to the Washington DC area. That was in 1998. I worked for the National Board for 8 years when they made the decision to move away from Washington DC to Charlotte, North Carolina as a cost-saving decision.. I was encouraged to move with them but Wicca and I decided we didn’t want to move. So, I wound up buying a busy LensCrafters practice in a nearby shopping mall. I worked in that practice and ran it until I decided it was time to retire from full-time practice. That was in 2011. I enjoyed the patient care and I was good at it, but I hated running the business. So, I was definitely ready to sell my practice. I was 68 years old. But I wasn’t ready to completely give up working. I definitely enjoyed the patient care and so I continued to see patients on a part-time basis. That continued, and I was seeing patients pretty regularly right up until the COVID pandemic hit and the country shut down. A full year went by and I didn’t see a single patient. When it came time to renew my optometry license I decided enough was enough and I made the decision it was time to hang up my ophthalmoscope. That’s been quite hard for me. My whole adult life many people have been dependent on me for their eyecare, and for helping them make important and often difficult healthcare decisions that can affect their life, and their well-being. I miss that. A lot. Now I am searching for ways to keep my mind occupied, and give me a sense of satisfaction and self worth. Photography was doing that reasonably well up until the incident where my camera gear was stolen (read my previous blog post if you are unfamiliar with that story). I have recently acquired high-quality Nikon camera gear, and I am hopful my photographic persuits will once again become a source of satisfaction. I have a trip to Yosemite planned with my daughter. That trip is sceduled for March. To get to California and back, I will be making a round-trip cross-country drive. I’m looking forward to that. I recently bought a Tesla (Model 3) and I think the cross-country drive will be fun and rather challenging, and will offer numerous photographic opportunities.

My kids tell me that I am pretty healthy compared to other people they know who are my age. I guess they are right. So, you might ask…why am I whining? Would I like to be 40 again? or younger? not really. I guess the crux of the matter is finding a sense of ongoing self worth. I need to learn how live out the remainder of my life, however much longer that may be, without people relying on me for helping them make important healthcare decisions. Just enjoy life. That sounds easy enough, but if you can help me figure out how to do that, I’d be forever grateful.