P. T.-- My New Favorite Place To Be: A Sign of Aging?

I am spending lots of time these days at the physical therapy office. I keep asking my therapist if my injuries are the result of wear and tear, i.e., aging, or if I injured myself in some way. He sort of squinches his eyes and starts talking real fast, partly avoiding the question and partly saying that it's a little of both. Although the majority of the patients in the PT office are "seniors," there are also a good number of young adults who are suffering sports injuries. Our bodies weren't meant to run at 100% for 100 years--at least that's what they tell me. The thought of developing a chronic condition which may limit my future activities is very troublesome to me. Is this just one more of the things we have to learn to accept as we age gracefully?

I'm in the throes of bone spurs and achilles tendonitis, caused by inadequate stretching of my calf muscles, aka, the gastrocnemius, before walking. My friends and I always stretch before walking but somewhere along the way I must have forgotten this one really important combination of muscle and tendon. The lack of proper stretching has caused the Achilles tendon to pull on my heel bone, gradually tearing away calcium deposits and developing a bone spur.

As I do my uniquely prescribed regimen of exercises for strenthening and stretching, I love to watch all the other clients there and guess what their injuries are. This is my third go-round in the experience of physical therapy. I have been diagnosed with frozen shoulder twice and a pinched sciatica nerve once. Those were back when I was much younger, say in my 50's. I have seen more ways to move the body and to manipulate joints and bones and muscles in all my visits to the PT office than I ever knew existed. Last week, when I saw a high school student athlete sliding back and forth on what looked like a very small ice-rink (in reality it was a very slick piece of some kind of synthetic fiber,) I prayed secretly that Scott would not say, "You're up next!" I'm sure I would have broken more bones, stretched more tendons, and torn more ligaments in the course of the exercise instead of healing any existing injuries.

At first, as a patient, you think to yourself, "oh my gosh, everyone must be looking at me. I must look so silly with my butt up in the air like this!" But after three or four visits, you realize that everyone is focusing on his / her own stretches and not paying much attention to you. Or else they are just as embarrassed as you are and they are avoiding eye contact! So far, I have found everyone--patients and therapists and therapists' assistants--to be extremely pleasant and helpful. What a world of knowledge they possess. I am in awe everytime I hear a new muscle or body tissue mentioned. Actually, I am in awe of the human body. Having an injury, no matter how small, causes one to develop new respect for the complexity of the body that we call our own.

The one part of the therapy session that is most pleasing (warning--true confessions ahead!) is when the therapist massages my ankle and calf. Even though it sometimes hurts, the pleasure of experiencing the sense of human touch is healing in itself. Plus, to speak quite frankly, I don't have much else going on in my life right now in the category of touching, so it's either from the therapist or my cat where I'm getting my strokes! (no pun intended)

Right now my goals are to be able to walk moderate distances pain-free in Arizona and at the Grand Canyon in September. Wish me luck! I may not be particularly athletic or smart, but I am determined!

Does anyone else have experience with bone spurs and achilles tendonitis? Tell me there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Going Back to Work Redux

Newsflash! Breaking news! Margaret is considering going back to work!

Well, it’s only for six hours a week—but it’s teaching—and we all know that for every six hours of teaching, it is necessary to put in at least double the number of hours for preparation and grading of papers. Add in the mandatory office hours and we have roughly the equivalent of a half time job—20 hours a week, at the minimum.

Some of you may be thinking to yourself right now, didn’t she say in an earlier posting that she would never go back to the work environment? Isn’t this the lady who preaches ad nauseum about finding out what makes you really happy and then doing it? Is this the same person who says “indulge yourself, you’ve earned it!” In my posting in March on the topic of returning to work, written after a brief three-week assignment in the public schools, I wrote the following:

“ . . .I wouldn't trade my retirement for anything.”

I also wrote, “. . . if you are considering a return to the work environment, I encourage you to think long and hard about your long term goals and the pro’s and con’s of giving up what you now have as a retiree.”

I have not changed my mind about what I said then. I wouldn’t trade my retirement for anything. And I have carefully examined the pro's and con's of giving up the lovely wide-open schedule that I am now enjoying.

First, the con's. Throughout these first two years of my retirement, I have embraced the joys of being the master of my own schedule and the thrill of spending a day doing nothing more challenging than doing some writing or reading, watching a classic movie on TCM and mowing the grass, if that’s what I chose. If some of the time was wasted, I figured that I had earned the right to do so. Nothing has made me happier than being able to wear jeans / shorts and a tee-shirt every day of the week. With this decision to return to a part-time teaching job, I will now have a schedule to adhere to. I won't be free to attend every lecture of the Elder Study Program that I have joined at the university. I will have to be more deliberate in planning times to go to the Y to get in my work-outs or walks with my girlfriends. I have thanked God every day for this two year respite from the pressures and stress of my full-time job. But now, I'm ready to take on the obligations of a slightly more rigid schedule because of the benefits that I see accompanying it. And, right now, it's only for one semester. If I don't like it, I won't do it the second semester. It's not a life or death decision. I like to think of it more as an “experiment in living.” This time last year I would not have been ready to take on this commitment. But now, I’m ready.

My primary goal in retirement has been to practice the craft of writing. Along with my regular monthly activities such as reading clubs, church dinners for the homeless, and writing club, and my daily tasks such as gardening and exercise, the time required for teaching will definitely cut into my writing time. But in a paradoxical sort of way, it is possible that taking this time away from writing just might give me more of a sense of urgency and might make me apply myself a bit harder to my writing projects. I will explain this more later.

The positive reasons for accepting this challenge are varied. I always loved teaching French. What I didn’t love were the bureaucratic hassles and all the non-instructionally-oriented paper work associated with the job. As an adjunct in a university, I think those two areas should be minimal to non-existent.

In regard to my writing, how can this job be a positive? Truthfully, I have been disappointed in myself in the amount of writing that I have produced this year. In order to write well, one needs to spend time writing every day. Picture me and the computer and my imagination sitting together multiple hours every day. This is a rewarding but solitary way to spend a life. However, it is also true that writers need a rich variety of life experiences to provide ideas and inspiration for writing. This solitary vs. engaged lifestyle dilemma is one of the great contradictions of the writing vocation. Engagement is the juice which powers our writing--the energy source which fuels our production. This week, for example, I am super- charged and full of ideas for blog postings and for stories. I can’t help but wonder if it is because I just spent a very hectic two weeks helping to plan activities and entertain 60 French people who are visiting my town? Was it the break from writing that is giving me renewed energy?

And, of course, there is always the issue of money. On my retirement pension, I have plenty of money to meet my daily needs and obligations. However, if I want to have my twenty-year-old wing-back chairs re-upholstered (which I am doing this month) or buy new furniture for the screened-in back porch (which I did in June) or take a nice trip (which I hope to do in the near future)—all of these diversions require that I supplement my income.

Can life in the world of higher education be any harder or more frustrating than the world of public education K-12? I’ll let you know as the semester progresses how I feel about this decision.