OH, DEAR!!

Today, I wandered into Senior Citizenville, the satellite medical community that services the significantly older population of the Valley, both local and snowbirds. The hospital is premier, noted for its state-of-the-art facility (and amenities), with smaller medical communities nearby servicing the routine maintenance kinds of adjunct medical services. Just as the coastal communities thrive in a sea of tanned skin and sunny blonde hair (natural or enhanced), the medical communities seem to attract sparkling grey hair, artificial knees, and bowed legs!!

My friend's husband had surgery today, which went well and provided them with good news for a change. My day began with my nuclear injection, followed by sharing time with my friend while waiting for her hubby to come out of surgery. We enjoyed a bagel outside, by the duck pond, with the temps reaching the low 80s by about 10 am, when I had to leave for the other half of my procedure. I signed in by 10:30 am as directed, but then had to sit and wait until 11:30 for the CT scan!! Because my office was at the entrance to one wing on the satellite medical facility, I people watched and, oh, dear, it was dismal!

It appears that anyone over a certain age, at which the hair greys, no longer walks, but rocks: back and forth, side to side, obviously coping with bad knees, bad hips, and/or bad backs. The men seem to be the worst, walking on cement as if they are coping with a seriously rolling ship deck! The women walk with dignity, in spite of the stiff knees and frozen hips, so their walk resembles a line of penguins, holding their bodies firmly in place, but relying on their arms to provide balance. After an hour of this endless parade of weeble-wobbles, I realized that my future is in that same line of declining bodies.

Today was the CT scan of the tissues and other soft connectors in my "L" back and hip area; next week, there are 2 separate MRIs to record the bone issues with the hips and the pelvis (each MRI takes an hour, so they don't do it all at once). When these photo ops are complete, perhaps someone will be able to tell me the medical translation of my December fall and injury diagnosis: stirred up arthritis. Once I know what is there, I am confident that I can figure out how to work through it and get back on my feet, standing straight and tall again, and not become a permanent, grey-haired, weeble-wobbly.