Bits of Tarnish on the Golden Years
I have regular conversations with my women friends about aging. Most of these friends don’t take a negative view of aging. There is nothing more depressing (validating?) than commiserating about the aging process, so we try not go down those rabbit holes. For the most part, I don’t have a negative view of my own aging. Wrinkles are expected, along with some sagging. Doesn’t diminish who I am. Weight gain has plagued my retirement years, but I can find ways to address that. My skin requires extra attention, and eating healthier is more important to me than dieting at this age.
At this age…
“At this age”…is quite a loaded phrase. This is an age, a stage, a time of life that was almost impossible to imagine at different times of my life. Oh, it’s not that getting older was something I dreaded. On the contrary, entering retirement and my “golden years” felt exciting, like an adventure. Embracing aging as a woman, the possibilities of my retirement years seemed limitless. What I hadn’t prepared myself for were health issues that would be limiting.
What a jolt it was to my healthful eating habits, regular walking, weekly exercise classes, and strength training to be hit with excruciatingly painful lumbar pain and sciatica in February. I knew I had some back issues from an MRI I’d had about 15 or so years ago. I guess I was thinking I was special because it didn’t occur to me that the condition might worsen. But worsen it did, and I have spent the last three months in physical therapy trying to relieve the nerve pain in my spine, and realign my hips and my life.
The worst of the pain coincided with the worst of the spring weather. March and April were wet, gloomy, and cold. I did a lot of sitting around with a heating pad, uncomfortable as it was, consoling myself with baked goods. As my despair grew, so did my waistline. Physical therapy was hard, another unanticipated hurdle. Walking felt impossible at times; on a good day I could manage about a mile at a very slow pace. The budget I had for cute spring clothes was spent on very expensive pairs of sneakers, which I alternate and wear almost all the time. So much for “finding your senior style.”
The past few months have dulled the shine of my golden years a bit. It’s time to wipe away the tarnish because that’s all it is — just a thin layer of life exposed to a new-to-me problem that like my expanding weight, is not terminal. There are so many people dealing with so much worse, and my heart goes out to them. But this is my pain in my little world, and it has really affected my day-to-day life. It’s time to clean off as much of the tarnish as I can. It’s not rust — yet.
In the blogpost My Waning Young-Old Years I wrote about wanting to make the last two years of my sixties two of the best years of my life—really “live it up” in my young old years. Well, I am into the last 100 days of one of those years, and it really feels like time to accept that despite my plans and pronouncements, the golden years will come with occasional shades of tarnish. I need to take regular upkeep much more seriously. I need to plan for it, polishing up the best bits of life, and accept that some of my most-loved “gold” looks far from sparkling brand new.
My doctor is encouraging me, reassuring me, that I will most likely bounce back from this nerve pain (well, maybe not bounce, but crawl my way back) in time. I am optimistic about the effects of my physical therapy, and am grateful for the progress I have made. Along with that, people who have been through this kind of chronic back pain have urged me to keep going to find out how far I can actually push myself. The article The Balancing Act of Living with Chronic Pain calls it “finding your sweet spot”— learning just how far you can push yourself. Recently I heard the phrase “motion is lotion.” That’s a phrase that motivates me to keep moving. But I am also mindful that when the pain is so intense it starts to impact my emotional state too much, I need to rest again. The article recommends doing a self-assessment by asking yourself questions like:
What is my physical status at this moment?
If there is physical discomfort/pain present?
Where is the pain located?
What is the level of pain?
Is it “normal” (usual for you) pain or more than that?
If it’s more than normal pain, how much more?
In what way(s) is it different from my normal pain?
Can I realistically walk (perhaps literally) through it?
Does it feel like there is an acute vulnerability that potentially makes exacerbation more likely if I were to engage in a particular form of movement or physical activity?
Is it worth it to try and push myself in this circumstance, and if the answer is yes, how far?
I find an abbreviated form of this assessment to be very helpful: naming my pain number, asking myself what I’d like to do for movement, and being mindful of what my body is telling me. So many of us, when we were younger, ignored things our bodies were trying to tell us. Keeping the shine on the golden years means listening and attending to it.
Right now, these are some new parts of my pain management routines that I have found helpful:
Tylenol
A slow, walking meditation
Splitting my physical therapy exercises up so I have some in the morning, middle of the day, and at bedtime
Walking at the local track, and trying to go a bit further each time
Heat therapy
Journaling about my pain and my progress
One of the things I have found that has helped the most is simply accepting that right now I have this pain. Accepting it, rather than feeling I have to constantly battle it, has felt very freeing. The emotional effects are sometimes as bad as the physical pain, so finding a way to “be” in this aching body has been critical. I remind myself I am experiencing a period of chronic pain; I am not chronically ill. I have so much respect for people who live with chronic illness. From them I have learned the importance of saying no to activity when you need to rest, practicing self-compassion, and putting spontaneity on hold for at least the time being.
As I try to bring back some sheen to my golden years, I remind myself that tarnish is a natural thing that happens when precious metal is exposed to, well, life. It may change the exterior appearance, but inside the value remains high.
I know many of my readers deal with chronic pain or chronic illness. If there is any wisdom you can share with us, I would love it if you could add a comment below. Stay gold, readers, stay gold.
