The vanguard of the baby boomers have reached their eighth decade. We have to face the fact that we are aging. For the most part, I’ve been quite fortunate. I have no diabetes nor heart disease. Up until the time I have turned seventy, I would claim that I was as tough as any twenty-five year old. I can ride a bike for miles. I typically hike on wilderness trails for hours at a time. Kandy and I walk around the neighborhood two miles every weekday morning. I’ve been able to dig ditches and chop wood with little difficulty.
That is, until I turned seventy. Things started to take a turn. Five or six years ago, the nurse told me during a check up that I had “incipient COPD”. I didn’t take much account of that because I still was able to do all those physical activities I’d been doing.
But then I got a slight cold after Christmas this year, and the congestion wouldn’t go way. I went to the clinic. They gave me a breathing treatment and sent me home.
A couple of months later, I find myself in the clinic barely able to keep up with my breathing. The nurse checked my heart for congestive heart failure. My heart is still good, but my lungs are in a stage of COPD. They gave me another breathing treatment and a prescription.
Since then, I’ve been doing okay for the most part. I still can bike and go on hikes. But sometimes my breathing is a little short at night and my cough can be chronic. I can still do much of what I’ve always done, except I’ll no longer claim to be as tough as a twenty-five year old.
When you are in your seventies, it is reality that health can only go in one direction; and that’s down. We do have a job, though, at this point in time of our lives to remain sufficiently active in order to maintain the best we can.
In our circumstances these days, the temptation for everyone, not just us old boomers, but everyone is to take the easy path at all times. Why walk when we can drive? Choosing to do something hard is unthinkable. When Kandy and I walk in our neighborhood in the mornings, we may encounter one or two other people doing likewise. We’re in a neighborhood of a thousand or more people! Is that all the people that take walks? As I’ve said, it’s too easy to sit on the porch rather than take neighborhood walks.
Since I’m in the habit of walking every day, I find that a crud of some type starts building up in me when I don’t walk daily for a period of time. It’s a habit I don’t want to quit.
I still may have COPD. There is nothing I can do to stop it’s progression. It’s heredity. However, I can choose to work at staying in the best shape I can in the meantime. I choose to take hikes on tough trails. I’ll walk every day. It’s our duty as owners of aging bodies to sometimes do what is hard to do. I seek to maintain a degree of “toughness” for as long as I am able.
I may not be able to do what I did as a twenty-five year old, but that won’t stop me from trying.