Category: Aging

Song for an Old Horse

I went to see my 30-year-old horse today. His name is Buzzy, he’s a retired Standardbred racehorse, and I’ve had him since he was 8.

Today was probably a true April Fools Day with the temperatures in the mid-60s under a cloudless sky in a part of the country where 10 inches of snow have been known to fall in May.

Today I joined Buzzy in the small lean-to in his also small corral, picking my way through the mud that is officiating whatever spring we are going to have now, before the May snow, that is. Buzzy is blind, but his ears and nose are faultless and when he heard the crinkle of the carrot bag I brought, he stuck his nose out in his blind way of moving and slowly ambled to me.

There we were, we two, standing in spring mud while I doled out the mini-carrots to him one by one. His winter blanket is still on, but I was able to brush off the caked mud on his face and neck. He likes to be groomed. I like to groom him. It’s a meditative thing – creating pleasure in a simple way for an old being. For this human, it’s soothing – watching the geese pair as they devotedly waddle together,  the wasps who have awakened from their winter nests, and the other horses lollygagging in the first warm sun of the season.

Thirty is old for a horse – VERY old – and I wonder how many more years, seasons, and days we will have together. Hopefully years, more likely seasons, hopefully, more than days.

I keep my frig stocked with many bags of carrots.

When You’re Old, Gray, and They Try to Suck Your Blood (and succeed)

Fact – this 90+ y/o couple lives in this senior apartment place where they pay $7000 month. Yes, I gulped, wide-eyed when I heard that. This does not include food, garbage removal, or cleaning. It also does not include help, as in with mobility issues or situations that just plain require the assistance of a kind human being.

Last night, the female of this said couple, who recently got a motorized wheelchair and who is also suffering from quick onset dementia, rammed her chair into something on the way back from the dining room, which resulted in her leg tearing open with blood gushing out all over.

It was fortuitous that my son and his wife were there, who then ran into their respective bathrooms to get paper towels to futilely attempt to stem the flow, mostly unsuccessfully. Would you believe that no one from the staff, several of whom were nearby and saw the episode, offered to help. This for people who are paying $7000 per month.

Treating an Arthritic Knee

I admit it. I am aging. I would like to say and gracefully so, but there are those that would disagree.

I’ve been active my whole life: played tennis, swam, rode horses, rode bikes, and the clincher – ran for over 40 years – until I couldn’t. That was a major bummer – not being able to run. But ever Pollyanna, I downgraded to fast walking – until I couldn’t. The solution? Slow the pace. This I did, despite ouches and grunts that occurred in rhythmic harmony. Thus are the musical notes of arthritis.

To quell my aches, I’ve tried a number of things including physical therapy, arthroscopic surgery, cortisone shots and gel shots. Nothing worked. I continued to toddle and limp along.

Enter my volunteer work at the animal shelter where I walk up to 10 strong dogs twice a week. We’re talking PAIN!! However, nothing was going to stop me from this passion it took me a lifetime to find.

I had a nice chat with my orthopedic doctor who suggested this relatively new procedure, Coolief. Here’s what she told me:

It’s simple: Radiofrequency energy targets the nerves in the knee area that send pain signals to the brain and destroys them so voila, no pain! It’s not quite that simple, so I will leave the nitty-gritty detail to the pros

As far as the experience – it is not pleasant. In fact, it is very unpleasant. In sum, four needles are inserted into your knee and adjusted so they target the correct nerves. This was excruciating, “No pain, no gain,” the nurse said. This was something I did not want to hear at the time. Once the needles were in and positioned, the rest wasn’t so bad. In fact, the warmth of the penetrating energy was soothing.

Before the docs can perform the “real” procedure, they have to determine if you are a viable candidate, so they do a “pre-procedure” Again, four needles are inserted into the area around your knee only this time lidocaine is inserted into your knee through them. When the procedure is over, you are instructed to go home and chart your pain level for the next four hours. If you do not have pain then you can be promoted to Phase 2.

There are no real after-effects of either procedure, so after the “real” one, I was fine after an afternoon of resting. I was then anxious to see how my modified knee would feel.

One of the issues I had at the shelter was getting the dogs out of their kennels where you have to kneel on one knee (my bad one) while holding the other knee against the kennel door to keep the dog from barging on out. This procedure had been a killer. (Notice past tense). Four days after the procedure was my first walking shift. I wanted to jump for joy at how painless it was!! Walking the dogs was also exciting because I could trot along with the more energetic dogs, also with no pain.  

The sad thing is that this fix is not permanent. The average time before symptoms return is 2 years. What then? A repeat of the procedure or eventually, a knee replacement. I am not at all thrilled about a knee replacement and what all that means in recuperation so I’ll probably hang out with Coolief for a bit, even if it does involve sticking needles in my knee

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