Hale and Hearty

I saw a patient the other day that would leave a great many of us speechless on a couple of counts. As my medical assistant so succinctly put it, "I hope I can be like her when I'm in my eighties."

At first glance it was easy to see why my assistant would make such a comment. Like many women of her generation she had obviously been raised to care about herself and her appearance. She was neat and trim with make-up on, hair neatly done, and a well assembled outfit. What a generation. She was luckier than many women her age, too, in that she still had a husband (perhaps a debatable point by some women) and she obviously had some degree of means.

She was luckier than most, as well, because she had a nasty broken shoulder and very little pain whatsoever.  No sling, no brace, no complaining. What a constitution.

She had injured herself by falling off a ladder while painting her house. In her eighties. Something I last did in my early twenties and, I can say with some degree of certainty, I will never do again.

Here's the part that becomes really unbelievable. It's unbelievable because it violates so many rules of personal safety; so many rules of environmental welfare; so many rules of self care.  It's just so wrong in so many ways it makes one's jaw drop: Having fallen to the ground while painting a house; having found yourself covered from top to bottom in white paint; having sustained a significant and painful injury of the upper arm; having already completed 83 years of life on this earth: Just how do you go about getting cleaned up and taken of? Three simple steps:

1. Cut off your clothes. She tells me it's difficult to operate scissors with an injured shoulder but assures me it can be done.
2. Wash in gasoline. She tells me it's really the only way to get the paint off.
3. Get your gas-washed self into a bathtub to wash off all that nasty petrol.

After all that, you have your family help you out of the tub when you discover you can't push yourself up with a bad shoulder. And a few days later, when your shoulder still hurts, you go to the doctor's office to get checked out.  And then, after your family doctor tells you you've bruised your shoulder and a week goes by with your arm still hurting, tell the doctor so he can finally order an x-ray, discover the nasty broken shoulder, and send you to see the specialist.  What a constitution.

A story like this should make half the complainers in this country shrivel up and blow away. It won't, but it should. And yes, if I live to be in my eighties I hope I can be like that woman as well. But I'm staying off any ladders. And, too, if I make it into my eighties I hope it'll be damn hard to find gasoline anywhere.