I Used To Be Healthy
Now in midlife, I feel like I’m falling to pieces
I used to be healthy and fit. As a kid, I only had a few falls and scrapes that needed stitches and then I got braces on my gappy teeth as a teenager. Up to my late forties, I had a couple of minor health issues. This all began to change as I approached 50, and several years on, I literally feel like I’m falling to pieces.
Two weeks ago, I accidentally stepped into a large hole in the grass near the corner store in our neighborhood. I fell hard, twisted my ankle and fractured my right foot in two places. I’m hobbling around in a walking boot air cast and crutches. The emergency room physician said it will take six weeks — probably eight — to heal since, ahem, things take longer when we’re more seasoned. (I’m finding out who owns the property so I can file a complaint and have the hole filled in.)
Ugh. After enjoying a nice summer, my golf season is over and worse, I can’t drive or visit my elderly mother who lives in a Residence. Stuck at home again after 18 months of pandemic lockdowns and being stuck at home.
Thank heavens that I have a husband to play nursemaid, cook and chauffeur and we don’t have any children living at home. I buzz him in the morning when I’m ready to be served my coffee in bed. He’s never going to let me forget how he’s been waiting on me hand and foot but it’s been sort of nice, I have to say. He warns me not to get used to it.
For my follow-up appointment with the Orthopedic clinic at the hospital, I had to complete a questionnaire on my health status, previous surgeries, and current medications. That’s when I realized I’ve been a major user of our health care system in the past several years and I’m not even 60 yet.
Most of us at midlife have had at least a few medical issues and procedures by now even if you exclude pregnancy, childbirth and gynecological conditions. Frankly, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a perfectly healthy 55-year old who has never had a few boo-boos. If you’re one of those women, congratulations. You won the DNA lottery and you’ve been lucky.
As a kid, I was a classic tomboy chasing around after my three older brothers and we were fortunate to have access to parks and pools and an outdoor skating rink where we spent countless hours. Then in high school, I played on just about every girls’ sports team there was and I even set a City-wide record in longjump that stood for 11 years. All that exercise kept me healthy and to this day, I believe it fortified my bones. Osteoporosis is one thing I don’t have according to the x-rays taken after my fall.
So what the heck happens when we hit midlife? Is it normal wear and tear on the body, old sports injuries, poor lifestyle habits like smoking, excessive drinking or poor diet finally catching up with us? I went to a high school reunion in my mid-forties and boy, it was obvious who had done some hard living, whether self-inflicted with poor lifestyle habits or due to socioeconomic circumstances. Also, scientists tell us that our genes and environmental factors can affect how we age. There’s that luck factor again.
For women, our female hormones and estrogen, in particular, affect how we will experience midlife and aging. Here’s what verywellhealth.com has to say:
In its role as the major sex hormone in your body, estrogen does some pretty important things that aren’t related to fertility…Estrogen is involved with numerous important functions throughout your body.
In my case, the doctor told me that a condition I developed a couple of years ago was partly due to the post-menopausal reduction of estrogen in my system. It was no longer at adequate levels to protect me when I caught a virus which triggered a hereditary condition that was lying dormant in my cells. What?! I was aware of estrogen’s protective effect against heart disease, brain health and osteoporosis but protecting us from disorders lying dormant in our cells?
To make matters more confusing, we’re told that excess estrogen can stimulate growth of cancer cells so we have to consider that before going on HRT. In any case, I find it mind-blowing that hitting midlife and going through menopause has such profound implications on our health.
In response, you hear people spout the ridiculous fallacy that women never went through menopause in the past since nobody lived passed 40. That is complete and utter hogwash. Anthropologists theorize that longevity began to significantly increase about 30,000 years ago, and since then, there have always been people who lived to a ripe old age.
The statistics may show that the average life expectancy 500 years ago was 35–40 but that number is skewed by extremely high childhood mortality. According to verywellhealth:
It does not mean that the average person living in 1200 A.D. died at the age of 35. Rather, for every child that died in infancy, another person might have lived to see their 70th birthday.
Believe me, I thank my lucky stars and count my blessings every day to be living in this era and not 100 years ago because I would surely be dead. That’s not an exaggeration. The medications and treatments available today compared to then are truly mind-boggling. Plus, research on the diseases of old age is accelerating due to the worldwide grey wave.
Despite all the positive developments and medical advancements, when we’re struggling with another health crisis it is easy to get discouraged and frustrated. Add in stresses at work, caring for elderly parents, financial issues, adult children who have failed to launch, babysitting grandkids — all while experiencing menopausal symptoms. No wonder midlife women get a wee bit irritable sometimes.
Because of the pandemic, the only professional support I’ve received in the past two years is one meeting and a few phone calls from a very kind occupational therapist who works for a nonprofit health organization. This sympathetic woman encouraged me to focus on how fortunate we are to have a range of excellent medications on the market now; in the past, there was only one to treat my condition. Apparently, this is also the case for a wide range of other diseases.
Even more encouraging, the occupational therapist told me that research is being done which in future will give doctors the ability to know which specific medication works best for each patient based on their genetic make-up. Pretty cool. She advised me to start accepting my new normal and work on moving forward. As the poet William Butler Yeats put it, we Irish have an abiding sense of tragedy, so this can be challenging. But I’m working on it.
Well-meaning friends assure me that daily meditation and yoga will work wonders for my afflictions. Other ill-informed folks are adamant that nuts and berries are nature’s cure-alls. Practice gratitude, they say. Watch a funny movie. Keep a journal. Then there is the common platitude, “God will never put more on you than you can bear.” Okay, well, enough already! I’m only in midlife and some days I feel like a train wreck.
I don’t want to throw up my hands in despair, though. I pray for strength and I try different coping strategies to see what works for me. Taking it day by day.
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