Health

 

Dad spent his entire working life in the grocery business. Just prior to being married he worked for a short while at a Dayton tool company (WWII was just ending). He was deferred from the draft due to part of one lung being removed when he was a child. That serious case of pneumonia moved him too close to death for comfort but I suppose it removed him from further risk during the war. He carried a curved scar on his back throughout his life as a reminder.

In the 1950’s he contracted rheumatoid arthritis and he blamed the Salk polio vaccine. I remember going one evening back to my school (Mark Twain Elementary School in Miamisburg) with my Mom and Dad and drinking a small cup of the vaccine in the gymnasium.

It was not long after that Dad began to develop pain in his joints and after a few trips to the doctor it was determined that he had the early stages of arthritis. His doctor was never wholly convinced that the vaccine triggered the arthritis but Dad felt the one followed the other too closely for coincidence.

In any case, Dad’s arthritis worsened steadily and he never had an entire day without pain the rest of his life. The progression of the disease could be most easily seen in his hands, becoming increasingly gnarled and twisted from the inside out.

He lived on aspirin. Every now and then he’d find a comfortable spot in bed at night, perhaps had his arms and hands tucked beside him at some special and unpredictable angle, where the pain left for a moment and he enjoyed a rare and glorious sleep unmolested by arthritis.

In his early 60’s he was fully disabled and could no longer work. In the final year he worked at a grocery in Franklin, Ohio and would often have to stop the car on his drive there, get out and stretch his contorted body so that he could go on a few more miles.

Oddly, Dad’s grocery jobs always placed him in the meat department and he spent forty years as a butcher. In his mid-60’s he became a vegetarian. But he stocked shelves, managed produce and spent many painful years working with frozen foods.

He always thought the cold and dampness worsened his arthritis faster than nature alone might have progressed.

Mom had her share of illnesses, too. She came from a family with a genetic disposition to breast cancer. Her mother was diagnosed when she was 70 and she would succumb to the disease well before her 80^th birthday. Mom’s sister developed breast cancer even earlier. And Mom, too, followed suit.

Once cancer has called, is there ever a day without the worry of its return? Mom managed to get by with a lumpectomy – she had an easier time of it that her mother and sister – but every scheduled mammogram from that day forward was met with fear and anticipation that the shoe was about to drop again.

But it didn’t.

She never had any other serious medical problems in her life and managed to live to 92 with no more than the occasional torment of ruptures.

And yet I knew Mom was always concerned for her health. There was always something lurking in the darkness, even when there wasn’t. If she’d have only known that early on her life would have been more enjoyable.

She hated going to the doctor, even for a routine check-up. Her blood pressure would rise, she would sweat and she exhibited all the symptoms of “white coat syndrome” even if no diseases. If a doctor’s appointment was on her calendar, she was on edge. Preparing for a visit meant a special bath – maybe more than one – and specially chosen clothing and cosmetics. Her life would have been better, she said, in the nineteenth century, when visits to the doctor were rare and any eventual disease meant sure and certain death.

For I think she’d have chosen death a number of times over going to the doctor.

Beyond those maladies, my parents lived a healthy life. They ate decent food, stayed mostly to themselves and had no interest in alcohol beyond a bottle of beer. Mom found beer relaxed her and a couple of bottles was the sure elixir of relaxation. Unlike her mother she never needed nerve pills. A glass of Milwaukee’s Best Light was a sure calmer in a can.

Dad could take it or leave it. On a hot day he’d enjoy a glass of beer but he’d have been more happy with a banana split. Like Dad, I’ve had a sweet tooth my entire life. Mom made wonderful desserts but she would never have chosen them for herself. She always preferred something salty.

Our lives are bookended by birth and death and that realization colors all the years in between. Are we simply lucky among the animals to realize this … or damned by it? For some it’s a prompt to get busy. For others it’s the catalyst to laziness. In both cases it’s the current of sadness that lies beneath the flow of our lives.

Would it help if our death dates were entirely known to us? Could we use the countdown to our advantage or would it prevent any constructive action if too near? Would a short life be one of constant fear? I imagine we’d be frozen in place unable to move at all.

Mom and Dad enjoyed 65 years together. Mom’s death followed Dad’s by just six years. So once together the pair did not have to spend much time apart. I’m sure that’s how they wanted it. Even once he retired and was constantly underfoot, Mom seemed to enjoy having the daily companionship. They were meant to be together.

They were role models, not for a lovey-dovey life but for one where they could depend on one another for every facet of their lives. I cannot imagine the one without the other.

© 2021 William G Schmidt