Bracing for Survival
In my youth and up to age 40 or so, I was 6’5” tall. I am now less than 6’4” and still receding. I know everyone shrinks a bit as they age, but I feel I have less shrunk than been compressed by gravity. When you carry around the amount of bulk I have for almost 70 years, its quite amazing that my muscles and bones have been able to hold up as well as they have. I often point out to people that nature has done a wonderful job of giving me tree trunks for legs and that my ability to support and maneuver my weight has been the direct result of those stalwart appendages, from the ankles up to and including the hips. Many people my age with less burden to carry and perhaps even less ambitious physical use of their body, have had joints replaced, repaired or at very least inspected surgically. I have had two knee traumas thirty and twenty-five years ago on my left knee, but no surgery or replacement of any sort. I skied actively on it with a knee brace for fifteen years and I have generally kept up my activities without any hindrance. I don’t do a lot of running for the bus, as they say, but I get by OK with my original equipment. As for my hips, there have been moments when I worried about the left one, but it has continued to function well without significant discomfort. My ankles could be more limber than they are, thanks to the edema that comes with size and age, but overall I am satisfactorily ambulatory with the normal amount of aches and pains.
I am really feeling some extraordinary aches and pains lately since we walked an average of 10,000 to 12,000 steps per day during our trip through the antiquity fields of Egypt and Jordan. Walking around Saqqara, Giza, Luxor, Edfu, Aswan, Abu Simbel, Coptic Cairo, Mt. Nebu, Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea was more trekking than I am used to even though I had been trying to gear up my walking around the hilltop for several months in preparation. Then, when we got back I went a few days ago to restart my Perfect Workout sessions that I had begun earlier in the year and had allowed to lapse due to our trip. My trainer only knows how to increase weight, so I probably pumped more weight after my hiatus than I should have. I am currently paying the price by virtue of having every part of my body screaming at me with the agony of excess lactic acidosis. Hello, ibuprofen.
When I was a kid I did one of those Lucy and Charlie Brown football place kicks where I used street shoes on pavement (we were pretty poor and sneakers were a luxury then). I landed flat on my back and got the wind knocked out of me for the first time in my life. Now there is a learning experience for you. I can honestly say that I wasn’t worried about my back while I gasped to regain my vacuumized lung capacity, but shortly after that I went to see a chiropractor for a ten-year-old back injury. Since then I have had off and on back spasms, but never enough to incapacitate me or even cause me to seek serious medical attention. A chiropractor or two and the osteopath to Princess Diana have all adjusted me a few times so that my back would unkink from time to time, but even an MRI taken at NYU in 2010 revealed that my spine and discs were more or less the way they were supposed to be. Thank you, Lord, for having the good sense to give me a strong enough body to accommodate this massive weight that you have made me lug around all these years (notice that I blame my weight on the Lord and fate more on my excessive eating habits).
But being tall and being big combine to put quite a strain on the old lower back at times nonetheless. I have often said that the activities I eschew the most are those that require lots of standing around since they can send my lower back into the rigor mortis of a spasm if I do it too much. I have called my condition “Cocktail Party Back” and I suspect that it is just that the configuration of my back, which has a slight hunch due to natural shape and probably exacerbated by less than perfect posture, gets weary and can’t support all that weight at some point. Usually, I can cure it by simply sitting for a few moments, but it gets increasingly tired the longer I dally over the canapés. I know this is somewhat genetic since my youngest son, Tom, has the same back shape and I joke with him all the time that he is destined to end up looking like me in his dotage. Boy, there is nothing that makes a kid’s posture improve at the margin more than telling him he is going to wind up looking like you when he gets older.
As I was preparing for my Middle East trip and walking with Kim and Betty in the mornings, i started using walking sticks, which I also took with me on the trip. My theory was that the sticks would lend support to my aching back during long treks. It worked well in Petra, our longest walking day, but I used them less elsewhere since they are cumbersome and tended to hurt my shoulders when I leaned on them too much. I could launch another entire treatise on my recent shoulder pains, but I won’t since it just falls into the general category of non-serious aches and pains of aging. I once asked my doctor about shoulder pain and she said, “We call that 50-year-old shoulder”. I told her I wasn’t about to pay her for that particular unenlightened diagnosis.
When I got back from the trip and was unpacking, I notices that just the act of stooping over the suitcase to unpack and sort out clothes was making my back sore. I wondered if a back brace might help since I doubt I can get my core too much stronger, my stomach muscles being already pretty solid. I have bought back braces before, mostly for motorcycle riding, and have found them almost more trouble than they are worth with their Velcro strapping and sweat-inducing closeness. But I went to Amazon shop anyway. I found a range of apparatus from $27 to $300, which just served to confuse me. My strategy was to spend enough for a good brace to give it a serious try and yet not to waste too much money should it be as marginally useful as in the past. I found one for $50 that seemed just right and I ordered it. Yesterday, when Kim and I went out for our walk, I notices a package on the front step and sure enough, it was my brace. I wasted no time and put it on right in front of the house. After velcroing it around my waste (it fit just right with none to spare…I had gotten the largest size), I grabbed the two side straps as shown in the package drawing and pulled them forward to Velcro across by flattened stomach. The back of the contraption is a web that sinches up and by pulling them, voila! That sucker tightened up around my aching back and made it immediately feel supported and much, much better. With a smile on my face, I went about my walk and almost tossed my walking sticks in the gutter.
I will try the brace again today for my walk and for some gardening work I have planned. I suspect this thing will be my yard work salvation for everything not involving a lot of bending over, since it does make that a bit difficult. I suspect I have found my crutch for the foreseeable future and am thinking I may even try it out at a cocktail party or two. I am now officially bracing for survival in this stand-up world we all live in.