One Thing or Another Column: So You Think That Hurts?

Narration provided by Wondervox.

A lighthearted look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all.

By Mark McNease

Somewhere after our fiftieth spin around the sun our conversations begin to center less on our plans for the future, and more on our aches, pains, and possibly debilitating side effects of the medications many of us take. “What did you think of your weekend in the Poconos?” becomes, “Can this really cause crippling flatulence? My doctor said it’s rare.”

I never really wanted to know about sleep apnea, or bad cholesterol, or Restless Leg Syndrome. Yet here I am, finally enjoying the benefits of turning 65—Medicare card, Social Security, a near-complete indifference to the opinions of others—while I visit one specialist or another for all these ailments. Need a new CPAP machine? Have to get another sleep test! Wondering why my legs have ached for months? Here’s a prescription that probably won’t harm you in the short term. It’s also used for Parkinson’s, but I don’t have that, so no worries. It’s just twitchy, achy legs. And that cholesterol drug you’re only supposed to take for a few months? It’s been five years.

This change in conversational topics happens slowly, but if you spend any time around people for whom middle age is a pleasant memory, you’ll hear it almost immediately. It’s not so much competitive—my aches are worse than yours—as it is natural. We talk about the cruise we’re taking next month, and our pets, and the tragic state of world affairs, but we also talk about the strange pains and annoying coughs and unexplained fatigue we experience almost daily. I used to think this was self-indulgent, but now that I’m talking about these things myself, I realize it’s just part of the arc of human experience. The young talk about young things. People with children talk about their children and their grandchildren. And ten older hikers gathering for a hike along the local tow path are probably going to talk about our aging bodies and the consequences of living in them.

I know this is not everyone’s experience. For every few hundred of us there’s the spry old gentleman you know who climbs the steps of the Empire State Building or runs his ninth marathon of the year. For every five thousand of us comparing medical charts, there is a Diana Nyad! But the odds of being them are about the same as the odds of blowing out the candles on our hundredth-birthday cake while a local news operation films the nursing home staff and calls us ‘a hundred years young.’ Don’t count on it.

I’ve accepted this as part of the journey from squalling baby to older adult (there’s a purposely vague term for you—we can be older adults for the rest of our time on the planet!). I won’t say it’s a comforting surrender, but at least we always have something to talk about.