The Complications of Early Aging

Quite some time ago, when I was still young, possibly in high school or possibly in college, I read a column in the newspaper in which a woman was comparing herself to her tweenager daughter.

The woman mentioned how one morning the girl had come downstairs complaining about some random, minor ache. She then documented her reaction, which was to realize that she couldn't remember the last time her body hadn't been sore, or stiff, or achy, or in pain in some way. The contrast between her daughter's assumption that she shouldn't hurt and her own expectation of constant achiness was a stark commentary on the passage of time and its effects on the human body.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I am getting to that point in life when I have relatively constant stiffness and frequent soreness. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have full-blown arthritis in my feet in just a few years. It seems very likely that I should probably be seeing a chiropractor, but I'm not because I'm cheap.

The thing is__I'm in that weird period of life (the middle, I guess you could call it) when it's hard to take aches and pains seriously. The first assumption is still that whatever pain is currently present is the result of something like sleeping "wrong" and will pass soon enough. Chest pains? Probably ate something too intense. Trouble sleeping? Probably too much stress.

So the question becomes__at what point do you start getting things checked out by the doctor? I completely understand all those young, healthy people that health care reformers complain about -- the ones who have no health insurance, by choice, because there are other things they'd rather do with their money. I'm not one of them, mind you, because my responsibility gene and need to buy into civilization are highly developed. But I get them.

I have insurance. But I haven't been to my general practice doctor in over 6 or so years. In that period of time, there have probably been 20 or times when some little symptom or something has come up that has made me fret for 2-3 days about whether I should go to the doctor. But I never have. And all of those random worrying issues, as far as I am aware, have gone away.

I'm not sure that I have a point here. I just think it's weird that we, as a society, don't talk about the strange and complicated transition from being a young person of vigor and health into being an old person of falling apart-ness. There is this weird, very long period in between when it's really not clear who you are or what to do about it.