Archive for the 'Aging gracefully or not' Category

I was not expecting the odor

Published at October 16, 2009 in Aging gracefully or not, Health, Vanity, Travel and Uncategorized. 13 Comments

I just got back, as I said in the last post, from Montreal. The primary reason I went there was to get Lasik (Canada has more advanced technology than the US, and even when the FDA approves certain equipment, such as the particular laser I was treated with, the earlier approval means that Canadian eye surgeons have more experience with the equipment than their American counterparts. Plus, it’s cheaper. And it’s Montreal). I was tired of being extremely nearsighted, and what with the onset of reading glasses* and all, it was looking like I’d be in very expensive and unworkable progressive lenses before too long. Why not get the nearsightedness fixed, and then worry about the aging-related reading glasses as a single prescription?

So I biffed off up North, where the many public wi-fi networks refused to speak to my netbook. And after a few days of sightseeing and wonderful meals and lovely chocolat chaud, I went to the clinic for my surgery. The pre-op and post-op is being done locally, but I went to Montreal for the actual surgery.

I knew there would be Clockwork Orange eyelid clamps. I probably should have guessed that, yes, everyone makes the same Clockwork Orange joke when the clamps are put in. I knew there would be some “pressure,” though I hadn’t really been clear on what it was for (apparently, to make you go temporarily blind so you don’t see the blade that’s cutting the flap in your cornea) or how much it would hurt when my orbital bone was pushed on.

I did not, however, know that there was going to be an odor — specifically, the odor of burning hair. It was apparently just the laser burning some carbon in the air, not my eyeball getting vaporized. But disconcerting, nonetheless.

It was over in minutes. The first half-hour afterwards was just fine, if things were blurry and I had the world’s goofiest-looking eye shields on my face. Then the anaesthetic wore off, and the burning and itching and feeling of sand-in-the-eyes started. That lasted four hours or so, during which time I was instructed to rest but not sleep — as if I could fall asleep with my eyes burning like that — and to blink at least every five minutes to keep things lubricated. I got very familiar with the limitations of my hotel room, which featured not a separate bathroom, but a sink, shower stall and toilet closet right in the room. As a concept, not terribly objectionable — until you realize that the legroom in the toilet nook leaves a little something to be desired, and it’s not possible to both take the wide stance necessary to position yourself correctly AND pull your pants down. Others before me had similar issues, or at least that’s how I interpret the fact that the seat was forever popping out of place.

After four hours or so, things started feeling much better, but I had to leave the shields on nonetheless until the following morning. Whereupon I removed them and went back to the clinic for my first-day checkup. My vision was 20/15, which is right about where it should be, since they overcorrect due to the fact that as the eyes heal, they naturally settle out a little, so I should end up with 20/20. I had a little inflammation in one eye, so they had me use the antibiotic drops more frequently for the first two days; I also have dryness, which is normal, so I have drops for that as well.

I’m quite pleased.  Things are kind of foggy, I’ll need to use reading glasses for a few weeks until the overcorrection settles out, I have haloes at night, and my eyes are dry, but that’s all normal and should go away within a few days or weeks.   But for the first time since fourth grade, I can fucking SEE without glasses or contacts.  Yay!

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* About those expensive progressive lenses that optometrist tried to push on me:  turns out I NEVER ACTUALLY NEEDED THEM AT ALL.  The doctor who did my pre-op for surgery figured that my contacts were overcorrecting my vision, which made reading a little difficult.  So he put me into weaker contacts, and that solved the reading problem while still enabling me to see distances.  Boy, am I glad I pushed back on those instead of spending almost $500 to solve a problem I didn’t even have.

My transformation into a brute continues apace

Published at April 28, 2009 in Iron, Aging gracefully or not and Sports. 5 Comments

Just moved on to Stage 3 of the New Rules workout! I’m taking my time, making sure that when I have injuries, or something doesn’t feel quite right, I take a step back and rest up instead of trying to work through it. What with the being old thing. And that’s working quite nicely.

But one thing is going to kill me in this stage — the body-weight matrix. For one of the workouts (you get an A and a B, and you alternate them), I have to do the following all at once at the end of an already-grueling session:

  • 24 squats
  • 12 lunges, each leg
  • 12 lunge jumps, each leg
  • 24 squat jumps

Rest and repeat.

That’s really fucking HARD at the end of a tough workout! And to make it more special, I did this first body-weight matrix in a dark playground by the on-ramp to the BQE Sunday night because I got to the gym too close to closing time to fit it in while there and had to finish on the way home. Which is just as well, because I was able to hold onto a piece of playground equipment with a death grip while doing the lunge jumps, which I thought were going to finish me.

But even though I was sure I couldn’t make it, I did. And then I visited a Mr. Softee truck on the way home.

Next up: getting involved in Scottish heavy events. I can throw 28 pounds. I might not be able to throw it far, or well, but I can throw it. The biggest hurdle is finding a place to practice, preferably somewhere that already has all the weights so I don’t have to hump them onto the bus.

Urgh.

Published at January 23, 2009 in Aging gracefully or not. 5 Comments

The headline for this video on the front page of Yahoo! is “‘First Grandma,’ a senior Olympian, has independent streak.”

Just think about that for a bit, what it means to say that someone has an “independent streak.” It means that their natural state is presumed to be dependence, and that any attempts to be independent are regarded as a charming eccentricity in someone who hasn’t accepted her uselessness.

Just another example of the way that we infantilize the elderly, and in particular elderly women (often to the detriment of their health). The kicker is that Marian Shields Robinson was born in 1937 — so she’s not yet 72.

Bifocals: FAIL

Published at January 14, 2009 in Commerce and Aging gracefully or not. 1 Comment

My foray into the world of bifocals/progressive lenses didn’t last long. Tried the monovision thing with the contacts, and it was a disaster — my dominant eye has astigmatism, so that was all blurry, and the undercorrected eye was all blurry, and my vision when reading was terrible. The undercorrected eye was supposed to be for reading, but it was so undercorrected that I had to hold things very close to read them clearly, because if I held them at the distance I usually do, it was too *far* for me to see them clearly. And I just couldn’t get used to the two different fields of vision — I felt like I couldn’t see very well at either distance, and since I wasn’t really having problems with my close-up vision prior to this whole experiment, it made me realize that if I did get the progressives, I’d be worse off than I was before. For a lot of money.

So I called up the optician to cancel the progressives, which were ordered Monday. I got some static from the assistant, who was the person I spoke to, because the lenses had already been ordered and I hadn’t called earlier. I explained that I had been unable to assess the whole monovision thing until Tuesday, because I’d been told to keep my contacts out of my eyes for a few days. She told me that the progressives didn’t work the same way as the monovision contacts. I said, essentially, no duh. I told her she needed to cancel the order for the progressives and I needed to get a regular contact lens for my left eye because not only couldn’t I see, I was getting a bit seasick. She told me that the doctor — who’s only in on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and here it was Wednesday afternoon and it didn’t look like I would be getting back to Brooklyn any time soon — would have to fit me for a lens, because she didn’t have the proper measurements for my left eye. I told her that was ludicrous, because that same doctor had examined me only a few days before, and if she knew how much to undercorrect my left eye, she would have the measurements. This made no impression on the assistant.

I believe I may have made an accusation that I felt I was being pressured into getting these expensive lenses which would make me see worse than previously, and now the assistant was trying to coerce me into taking them because she’d placed the order. This got me a call from the doctor promptly after she came in for the day, during which she took exception to any insinuations of pressure tactics, but fortunately confirmed my suspicion that she did, in fact, know my left eye’s relevant measurements, having collected such information during the exam, and that she could provide me with a new lens so I could see. After another attempt to explain the virtues of progressive lenses preemptively, as in “make the investment now, because your eyes will get worse now that you’re an old bat,” and an unnecessary reminder that the progressive lenses do not work the same way as the monovision contacts — which, again, no duh — she told me that she had ordered a trial pair of the astigmatism-correcting lenses and hoped to have them by Saturday.

I hadn’t anticipated being able to pick up the contact until tomorrow, but I found myself with just enough time to get to Brooklyn between my LIS orientation and another engagement tonight, so I went to pick up the lens and get the refund for the progressives. The optician, who owns the joint, was extremely accommodating about the refund. Which is nice, because I’d gotten a bad impression from the assistant and the optometrist.

It had to happen someday, so why not the year I turn 40?

Published at January 11, 2009 in Aging gracefully or not and Vanity. 7 Comments

I went to get my eyes checked yesterday for the first time in 7 years (I know, I know). Turns out there have been many advances in contact-lens technology since then, and there might in fact be nothing wrong with my itchy, dry eyes that a better lens can’t fix. Which I might have found out had I had my eyes checked in all that time, but the place where I get my lens refills never pressed the issue by, you know, following state law and asking me for a new scrip every two years. Well, not until they hired someone new, who asked me on my new refill.

And, well, I wasn’t seeing so well out of my old, scratched glasses and the contacts were getting miserable to wear, and blurry. So I shuffled off to the eye doctor yesterday with my beloved yet somewhat battered 7-year-old Alain Mikli frames, hoping to get out of there with a simple change of lenses and exam for less than $300 or so.

It was not to be. Now that I am 40, I have entered the land of reading glasses, which for me means (more expensive) progressive lenses since I’m also blind as a bat. As for the contacts, they’re hooking me up with better, moister lenses but doing the monovision thing as well, which means slightly undercorrecting my nondominant eye for reading but fully correcting the dominant eye for distance vision (and, possibly, correcting the slight astigmatism in that eye, but we’re doing a trial of the non-astigmatism-correcting lens first). Unfortunately, this cost me more than I’d hoped to get away with, but that’s what you get for putting these things off, I suppose.

And hell, if it means I can freaking SEE again, it will be worth it.

Wiped.

Published at January 2, 2009 in Iron and Aging gracefully or not. 9 Comments

Trying a new workout routine, from The New Rules of Lifting For Women.  Now, I’ve been lifting weights for some time now, and working with a trainer, E, who’s fun as hell to train with.  She and I have a ball when I train, and we’re still not sure of which of us tells filthier jokes.  She loves that I love to lift big heavy things, and I love that she encourages me while keeping my knees and hips from blowing out and protecting my hinky rotator cuff.  If I have one problem, it’s trying to do too much too soon.

But because I’m going back to school, my training sessions with E will soon come to an end.  So she and I have been working out what I should be doing on my own, and I picked up the New Rules after reading very good reviews on Amazon.  And so far, I haven’t been disappointed.  E also approves, though she really doesn’t like anything like barbell squats where the bar goes anywhere near your neck.

However, since I told her I was going to go ahead and do them anyway, she agreed to spend the last few sessions with me showing me how to do them, and some of the other exercises in the program which I haven’t done, or which I’ve been doing in a different way (such as deadlifts, which I’ve been doing with straight legs while the book starts with a variation on the deadlift that has you squatting, before moving on to the straight-leg deadlift in a later phase).  That way, I can try them out safely and under professional supervision.

Today was the first day I tried out a full workout from the book.  Yikes!  I was breathing very hard by the time I finished my step-ups, and I walked away feeling wiped out.  It’s not like E doesn’t work me hard, it’s just that I’ve never done those exercises in that combination before, and because I tried things I haven’t done, or haven’t done recently, I worked all kinds of new muscles in new ways.

The goal of the program is to add muscle mass, build strength and burn fat, if necessary, due to the increased muscle mass.  A lot of the advice is contrary to all the messages women get about getting in shape — for example, eat more! Stop doing so much cardio!  Get more rest!  Lift big heavy things!

Sadly, the book does contain reassurances that, no, you won’t get “bulky” if you lift weights over 10 pounds, because it’s hard enough for a man to put on muscle mass even with testosterone, and contains reassurances that you will *look* good.  I say “sadly,” because it’s necessary to make those reassurances to women because of our cultural conditioning.   Being strong isn’t enough of a goal in itself, not if you might take up space and not look good in your clothes.  The author goes to some lengths to assure readers that the end result will not be mannish.

Which is kind of a shame, because the book has a hell of a lot of solid information, and includes explanations for why you should do certain things, like recover for the prescribed length of time, or eat five to six times a day, or not waste time with bicep curls.

40 Today

Published at September 23, 2008 in Aging gracefully or not, Hear me roar and Woman-Hating. 17 Comments

Which now makes me middle-aged.  And if there is one thing that I have learned this year, it’s that middle-aged feminists are by turns useless, obstinate, dried-up, bitter, obstructive to “real” feminist issues like reproductive rights because their uteri have surely all fallen out, unfuckable, unhip, unimportant, spiteful, racist, deluded, not people to be associated with, not people who are needed to be members of organizations chasing shiny new members, dangerous, dry-pussied, possessed of a martyr complex, not needed, not worth listening to, and, most importantly, In The Way.

Yet, despite the insignificance and marginality of middle-aged feminists, there sure are a lot of people obsessed with their (our?) plans for November.

Dunno about November, but tonight I’ve got plans to take a class so I can learn to make seitan.

Back to the gym

Published at July 12, 2008 in Iron, Aging gracefully or not and Health. 3 Comments

Whee! I’m finally cleared to go back to the gym for the first time in about six months.  My back’s okay, my toe has healed up, and my knee is at a point where workouts are encouraged to strengthen it.  So I called up my trainer and booked 20 sessions.

I haven’t lost as much ground as I had been afraid I would; Elizabeth, my trainer, told me it’s much easier to regain lost ground than to build up the muscles in the first place.

The coolest thing is the whole chest business.  There came a point, about a year into my workouts, when I suddenly felt my chest engaging when I did bench presses.  It was very odd; I had thought it was working before, but apparently not.  According to E., it takes a while for the body to learn to do that instead of relying on the arms and back.  And the cool part was that my body remembered that when I got onto the bench.

I also was able to bench-press the 45-pound bar plus two 10-pound plates first time out.  I had last gotten up to the 35-pound plates, so it was pretty great to see I hadn’t deteriorated back to square one.  I think it had taken me six months to get to the bar alone.

The only real drawback is that E. is leaving the gym in a few months, having had it with being a trainer.  But we’re going to work out some kind of “workout buddy” arrangement to continue, where we train together on the weekends and I’m on my own during the week.  I may also take the money I save from not buying training sessions and start going to a yoga studio as well to increase my flexibility.  Because one of the things that doomed my knee was tight, very tight, super tight IT bands and calves.

The heavens open, the angels sing

Published at June 17, 2008 in Aging gracefully or not and Health. 2 Comments

I fucked up my right knee but good during last week’s move.  I’d been hoping that ice, elevation, rest, etc. would help, and it has, but it’s still really goddamn painful.

So yesterday, I decided to call someone.  I called up the guy who’d fixed my left leg and knee with Active Release Technique (which is extremely painful, but brilliantly effective), but his office was closed.  Then my regular chiropractor called to confirm my Thursday appointment and I mentioned to her that my back was fine, but my knee was painful.  She said she could help with that.  So I changed the appointment to yesterday and limped in.

She hit me with some ultrasound and gave me some ice.

I’m telling you, the ultrasound was MAGIC.  Immediate relief of a good deal of the inflammation, pressure and pain.  I’m going back again on Wednesday for another hit.

I’ll still see the ART guy, since the problem was likely caused by tightness and nastiness that he can deal with (I used to have the same problem on the left, but not since he fixed that).  But for immediate relief of the knee itself, I’ll keep on keeping on with the ultrasound.

Oy.

Published at April 25, 2008 in Aging gracefully or not, Get offa my lawn and I will die alone eaten by my pets. 4 Comments

So tonight, I’m walking down First Avenue in the East Village on my way to dinner, and I pass Lanza’s restaurant. “Oh,” I say to myself. “Lanza’s. That’s where I had my first date after I moved to New York.” My date was Bill, whom I met through the Village Voice personals, back when the ads were in print and you either wrote a physical letter* or called a voice mailbox (which I think is what I did). I dated Bill for a while after that, though he turned out to be a Nice Guy™ and put me on a pedestal. He also gaslighted me, which was a lot of fun.

And then I start thinking about Bill, and about how long ago that first date was, and it suddenly hits me: Bill is 53 now.  I dated a man who’s now 53.

Which makes the fact that I’ve rejected several guys from OKCupid out of hand for being over 50 somewhat ironic.  Well, if by “ironic,” I mean, “indicative of not quite coming to terms with my own age.”

____________

* In my first job out of college, I worked at a newspaper in Connecticut.  One guy there had previously worked for the Springfield Advocate, which is not associated with the gay paper, but is part of a chain of alt-weeklies in Southern New England.  He said that one of the traditional things to do at someone’s goodbye lunch was to take the box of unclaimed mail from the personals and make the person read the letters out loud.  I’m kind of glad that technological advances have made this particular ritual obsolete.

And to make myself feel even older, I remembered that the daughter of another one of my coworkers, whom I used to babysit for extra cash, is now old enough to be starting college this year.