I WAS NOT READY FOR THIS!!

 I had no preparation for this at all, and nothing I ever heard about it ever registered in my head.  Maybe I thought if I just ignored what I was hearing it wouldn’t happen to me.  Denial and deliberate ignorance provided comfort once upon a time, but did little to prepare me for the brutal truth.  So, what is the horrible thing I was deliberately unprepared for?  A fair question and the short answer is “old age”.   That however is an incomplete answer that only touches around the edges of the problem.   

I’m 73 years old, and to be honest I really never considered that number to be “old”….getting close maybe, but not quite old.  I always thought that “old age” is more than a number.  Health, happiness, energy, enthusiasm, activity, engagement….those are all part of the formula.  If you assigned a “score” of 1 to 5 to each of those parts of the formula then I would estimate that a total score close to 30 would potentially subtract numbers from that base age number….a total score of something less than 15 might start adding to that base age number.  

When I was a child, youth, & younger man health was never something I worried about or even thought about because I was hardly ever sick and was never injured seriously.  I think the sickest I ever felt was when I had the mumps at about age 15.  That laid me flat for several days.  Aside from that episode of the mumps I had the usual colds, stomach flu, and I’m allergic to ragweed pollen and live in the ragweed capitol of the world.  None of that prepared me for the realities of aging and my paternal grandparents didn’t help much either.  My grandmother lived to just short of 100 and had lived alone into early 90’s and grandpa lived to 86 without any major issues up to the end of his life. 

I had my right knee joint replaced in 2007 just before my retirement at the end of that year.  I healed quickly and regained and exceeded my former activity levels and, of course, adding to my unrealistic expectations about my health.  My wife has had a sort of opposite experience as far as health.  She’s had various health issues much of her adult life.  Not life threatening stuff, but just enough to give her some experience and a realistic view of what old age might feel like.  

Oddly my introduction to “old age” happened right around Father’s Day, the year I turned 70.  One of my daughters suggested I should go get one of those $49. Heart scans.  My blood readings and annual physicals had always been decent, heart trouble was not suspected but, I love a bargain, and $49 sounded like one.  As expected the old heart looked to be in pretty good shape but there was something else seen on the scan they thought I should have checked….a spot on my left lung.  After a whole bunch more scans and x-rays and then a biopsy I learned I had a tumor….I use the word tumor because it sounds a little less scary than saying CANCER.  The cure was the loss of half of my left lung, but I was spared Chemo treatments.  I’ve written before of the moment in the hospital when the reality of the whole thing finally registered in my head.  How lucky I was and how humble I felt right then.  But you know what? I really didn’t learn anything.  Since that day I have continued believing I’m “immune” from my body wearing out.  It’s interesting how easy it is to lie to yourself, even as the evidence is staring back at you in the bathroom mirror every morning.  

Then came 2020 and another wake up call.  The year started out just fine. We were making big plans to do some traveling and of course that didn’t happen. First came Covid and thankfully we have both managed to avoid that mess but there was something going on inside my head that was waiting to give me another ugly surprise.  That Summer I spent a lot of time working in the gardens, making some changes and cleaning up from the neglect of 2019.  One very typical, hot, and steamy afternoon I was out working up a sweat and decided I should go inside and cool off.  

That’s the last thing I actually remember.  

We had gotten new appliances delivered to the house during a kitchen remodel we were having done.  Those appliances sat in our dinning room for more than a two months  before the work was done and they were installed.  On that hot August afternoon they had been there for several weeks already.   I walked into the dinning room, looked around, confused and asked Camilla what was in the boxes.  She thought I was joking around.  Sadly I was not and after a bit more conversation it became apparent to her that I was quite serious, and quite confused.  

She sat me down in my recliner and after a sort of groggy rest of about 10 minutes the brain started working again.  We thought maybe I’d had a heat stroke or something related to the heat.  After talking about the episode for a couple of days we decided I should check with the doctor.  Alarm bells went off as we explained the incident to the doctor.  He thought I could have had a stroke and ordered an MRI which showed no evidence of a stroke.  Three or 4 months later as we were sitting at our computers in the upstairs office near bedtime Camilla asked me “how are you feeling now”?   I told her I felt fine and asked why.  She said she was just concerned since I had thrown up that afternoon.    WELL CRAP…I HAD NO MEMORY OF THAT EVENT AT ALL, WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?  

Finally 2021 arrived and we made it all the way to March without any strange events.  March 16th I passed out when I had walked into the pantry to get some dessert after dinner.  That got me an ambulance ride to the hospital, which I didn’t even get to enjoy because I was mostly out during most of the trip, though I do recall being irritated that the medic kept talking to me and all I wanted to do was go to sleep.   Of course all of that excitement led to a whole bunch more testing and at my first meeting with my neurologist he informed me I had been having seizures.  

My experiences most closely match a type of seizure called Complex Partial Seizure one of many different types of seizure activity that can come with Epilepsy.   Well, I sure as hell didn’t see that one coming!  On the positive side seizures don’t hurt and I don’t remember them but my fear is that there may be more mayhem happening up there that I’m just not aware of.   I’m taking one of the standard anti seizure meds and that kept the number of seizures at a minimum up to the last 3 months.  I’ve had two in the past week….so now it’s back to the doctor for further evaluations and possibly a change of medicine.  

I really wasn’t prepared for this but I now realize I might as well get used to it.  Update: the dosage of med was adjusted and I've been seizure free for months.