Aging, aching and listening to your body

To look at me now it’s hard to imagine I was once a bit of an athlete. My name is on the Niagara Falls Sports Wall of Fame a couple of times (they couldn’t afford a “Hall”) for football and soccer. I played for the Under 21 Ontario provincial soccer champions and for the Nova Scotia Senior champions a few years later. I even have a cup for playing in the Ontario provincial Bantam Lacrosse championship.

You name it and I’ve tried it. I’ve been on championship hockey teams, softball teams and I was a better than average tennis player. But the thing is I always played with a certain gay abandon and that has its costs.

Each time I would come home with a broken ankle, a broken leg, a fractured arm, or a dislocated finger or two, my mother would shake her head and say, “You’ll be sorry.” It didn’t matter. I fractured my skull, ruptured a kidney and tore a ham string so badly the only way I could climb stairs was to sit on the bottom step and using my arms lift myself up one tread at a time. I still didn’t get it.

Well that’s all changed. Most days

now I ache, as Leonard Cohen so succinctly put it, “in places where I used to play.” I can predict bad weather or tell you what the humidex is better than Environment Canada, although that’s not saying much. In short, my past has come back to haunt me.

The one thing I have learned is that it pays to keep an eye on things. Like most jocks I have always shunned doctors. A little pain, a small ache, they’ll pass. No big deal. After all as I told my bride, “I treat my body like a temple,” to which she replied, “Yeah, the temple of doom.”

But, as I said, I have learned. Things like blood pressure, sugar levels, cholesterol and hearing should be monitored regularly. Unfortunately I learned the hard way.

Last week I went to the optometrist for a routine check-up. I had been noticing for some time a number of what they euphemistically call “floaters” sliding across my vision. One in particular appeared to be more frequent and larger than the others. After the standard exam which included the usual chart reading, blowing air into my eyes, flashing lights etc. the doctor suggested an in-depth exray scan, something I hadn’t bothered with for several years. It was a good idea.

Putting the results on the computer screen, he said, “I want to show you something. You have a detached retina and it’s serious.” True enough my retina had slid about two thirds of the way down the side of my eyeball. “If it slides to here,” he said, pointing at the screen, “You could lose your eye.”

This was at 3 o’clock. By 4 o’clock, thanks to the optometrist, I was in the hospital opthamology department going through the same air-blowing, light flashing, finger-following tests. The opthamologist agreed. It was a detached retina and it was serious. Another phone call and I had a 7 a.m. appointment with the surgeon. The following day this opthamologist explained that he was going to put an air bubble into my eye that, if all went well, would shift the retina back into place. All I had to do was go home and sit with my head turned to the right and lowered to a forty-five degree angle for that night and the next day. Saturday couldn’t come quick enough.

At 8 a.m. I got the good news. It had worked. The retina was back in place. The bad news was that he was now going to re-attach it with laser surgery, a procedure akin to sticking thirty-six needles into your eyeball. But it’s done and all that’s left is to wait a couple of weeks to make sure it worked

The point in all of this is that it’s best to check when you see or feel something isn’t quite right. You know your own body better than anyone. Listen to it. I was lucky and blessed. Lucky because, despite rumours to the contrary, our health system can react quickly in a crisis. Blessed, because the love of my life is able to change from her Nurse Ratched whites to chefs toque to lawn mowing sweats with ease and grace. She even makes a perfect Sea Breeze, although her idea of last call is a lot earlier than mine.

I’m writing this with one eye so don’t look for a column next week. I will be in one of my favourite places, relaxing with my feet up and my head at a forty-five degree angle enjoying the waning days of summer and counting my blessings.