Middle Age Health Problems

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Solitary Confinement

My middle-aged body is slowly wearing out from wear and tear. I had a triple arthrodoisis (major foot surgery that fuses three joints in the foot) three months ago to fix arthritis and pain which was limiting my ability to walk. I was not allowed to bear weight for 10 weeks so I got around on a knee scooter. It was my right foot, so driving was out. While a nifty invention, my hands hurt from leaning on the scooter, my knee was chafed and my back hurt. To use my teenage daughter’s favorite phrase, I was a hot mess.

Not being a kvetch by nature, I was sick of myself and pretty sure my housemates were sick of me too. Being a stay-at-home mother, I run the household and keep the trains running on time. Since it wasn’t emergency surgery, I was able to plan ahead for rides, meals and help around the house. To my surprise, the household ran relatively smoothly as I directed family life from the couch.

I would be remiss if I didn’t appreciate that my confinement wasn’t life threatening or permanent, for which I was grateful. So while I had anxiety about the surgery and recovery I was mindful that I wasn’t “sick” which helped keep it all in perspective. I had surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer in 2010 so I was well aware what an existential crisis feels like. This was merely a big, fat nuisance.

My dignity definitely took a hit. Dependent on my husband to get in and out of the shower, I developed a new appreciation for my privacy and independence.  Our morning ablution schedule became intertwined. It became a joking power move where I would meekly ask, “Could I take a shower now?” and he would bark like a drill sargent, “You will shower when I tell you you can shower.”

Obviously, a sense of humor was key. Otherwise how could I tolerate hoisting myself up and down the stairs on my rear end or on my knees? My sister came from out of town to help nurse me and found my scooter riding so hilarious that she made a video. Our friends found it amusing and I wondered aloud if it could go viral. My kids assured me that it wasn’t that funny. Now, if I had fallen over, that would have been a different story.

I felt a little disconnected from my kids and my husband. Without the parallel talk time while driving and my going to bed early, they were left to deal with the logistics of their lives. On the one hand, it was a welcome break from all of the mental and physical juggling. On the other hand, I felt a little left out. As I recovered and could be more engaged, the kids resumed being normal teenagers and taking me for granted. I took comfort in remembering something Lisa Damour wrote in a 2016 article in the New York Times:  “Happily, the quality parenting of a teenager may sometimes take the form of blending into the background like a potted plant.” On a knee scooter or on the couch, I could excel at being a potted plant.

I developed a whole new appreciation for physical therapists. I saw the surgeon only sporadically so the physical therapist really was my cheerleader and expert regarding my progress. Mine was a guy named Ken, a few years older than me. I looked forward to my twice weekly sessions. During the time when I couldn’t bear weight, I would lie on the table while he massaged my foot, iced it and used electrical stimulation – all without asking anything in return (other than payment.) I could dump all of my frustrations about my recovery on him and joked that he became my best friend.

I tried not to be a kvetch but I know I wasn’t always successful.  I actually developed callouses on my hands from gripping and pushing down on the scooter and they would fall asleep at night so that I began to worry that I was developing carpal tunnel syndrome. I felt like I was playing a bodily game of “Whack-A-Mole,” fixing one problem as another one popped up.  I confess to having a pity party or two. I am human, after all. My girlfriends were great shleppers and listeners, helping me keep my sanity. I was grateful that my confinement was in the age of Netflix. Don Draper and his crew of “Mad Men” kept me company as did the wacky antics of the gang at Dunder Mifflin in Scranton.

The day came when I was given the green light to drive. I hopped in the car and headed to the bank with the windows down and the radio blasting. I felt like a 16 year old with a new license. The freedom was invigorating. My fantasy was shattered when I hobbled through the parking lot, like the middle age, debilitated woman I was. But in the car, and sometimes in my mind, I’m 16!

Recovery is complete and now the serious rehabilitation begins. Ken, once my masseuse and psychotherapist, is now my slave driver. “You mean I have to get off the table and actually do stuff now?” I asked him. I long for the days of passive physical therapy. Was the surgery worth it? Time will tell. Determined to shed my crutches and resume my active middle age, I will push forward and back out into the world. One step at a time.

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Sweet Elusive Sleep

I just want a good night’s sleep. My kids are all teenagers so the unpredictable nighttime madness is over. Some stay up later than me so we peacefully coexist in the nocturnal hours.

A few months ago I noticed that my hands were falling asleep at night. At first I thought I was just sleeping on them. Then I noticed numbness in the tips of several fingers on one hand. I worried that I had diabetes like my late mother. Not being overly neurotic or a hypochondriac, I occasionally use a handy app called iTriage for perplexing symptoms before I go see a doctor. I had previously diagnosed myself accurately with shingles.

This time I came up with a possible diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome. I saw a hand specialist who confirmed my diagnosis which is apparently very common in women in their 50’s. While not thrilled with this diagnosis, at least it’s not life-threatening and I was once again secretly proud of my diagnostic skill. I would have patted myself on the back, if my hands didn’t bother me so much. The specialist recommended I try hand/wrist splints for a month while sleeping to see if this would relieve my symptoms.

I never thought how much numb hands would affect my horizontal repose but they did. It seemed cruel that on the rare occasions when I could leisurely lie in bed and read in the morning, my body wouldn’t cooperate and I had to get upright and out of bed to relieve the numbness. Ever the supportive spouse, my husband tolerated my whining, the loud ripping off of the velcro contraptions/splints of torture during the middle of the night in my moments of desperation and discomfort and supported my decision to have surgery.

The surgery was uneventful and seems to have relieved the symptoms. Sweet sleep would be mine again. I was psyched. Then, before I was even completely recovered a new problem developed. My husband told me I was snoring.

Snoring? Oh great. One sleep problem addressed and now another one loomed. I was mortified. Is this what middle age is like? Solving one physical problem and then another one pops up like a game of geriatric Whack-a-Mole? Sure, my husband had to endure my complaining about my hands but it didn’t really affect his sleep. Now I had a problem that affects our marriage. I envisioned a slippery slope where one of us leaves the bedroom to get some sleep and there goes the marriage as we know it.

I googled “snoring in middle age women” and find I am not alone. I am optimistic that I can tweak my lifestyle with good results before I have to move on to more invasive sleep studies, c-pap, etc. So many people are kept from a good night sleep by anxiety, depression and stress. I am fortunate that these things don’t plague me. It’s my body that is rebelling and ruining my rest.

My husband and I can still joke about it. Before going to sleep the other night, I wished him a good night sleep and hoped that he wouldn’t put a pillow over my face. He agreed that while it might be tempting, he didn’t really want to go to jail.

While we laugh, clearly this has the potential to be a real problem, not only for me but for my bed-mate. Just when I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep I feel exasperated that it is elusive for now. I dread going to sleep, worrying if I will drive my husband crazy along with the nudges from him during the night. To add insult to injury, I find that the glass of wine or two that I occasionally enjoy messes up my sleep as well. Falling asleep is easy with alcohol but I sometimes wake in the middle of the night unable to fall back asleep.

So I read – thank God for the Kindle but who knows how the electronic devices screw up my Circadian rhythm?

The pediatrician recently gave one of my teenagers a stern talking-to about the importance of getting 8 hours of sleep per night so all of the data he has acquired during the day can be sorted and stored into his brain properly while he is sleeping. All I could think about was how amazing it is that I function as well as I do, given the shenanigans of my body while it is allegedly “sleeping.”

The writer Anthony Burgess said, “Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”

It almost makes me yearn for numb hands.