Mobilizing
I find myself thinking a lot these days about the notion that motion is the best lotion. When I left New York City three years ago, it coincided with my long-time NYU general practitioner deciding he too was moving his act to California (somewhere up by Palo Alto, I think). He was an Irishman with a noticeable Irish accent and a tendency towards osteopathy, which is to say a more holistic view of healthcare. He was the guy who wouldn’t give Kim and me Cipro when we went to India on a CARE Directors trip. He was also the guy who finally said to me in my exit interview with him that we had mutually determined that I did not have any heart problems, no cholesterol issues, therefore unlikely to build up excess arterial plaque in my coronary or carotid arteries, no blood sugar problems, so no diabetes concerns and only minimal and controllable blood pressure issues. But….but, he said to me, what about your joints? That was his holistic way of telling me that sooner or later my weight and sedentary ways would eventually catch up with me and my joints.
Strangely enough, unlike most people I know who are my age, I haven’t had any joint surgeries or, God forbid, replacements. I say God forbid not because joint replacement can’t be a very effective fix (Kim has two artificial knees that she swears by), but because I tend to think that nature has done a unique job finding my ergonomics and giving me parts that bear up amazingly well with all the strain I put on them. In 1990 I managed to injure my left ACL during a business offsite in Marbella, Spain. I remember the red-hot, searing pain of it, but I also remember the orthopedist in Toronto telling me we should replace it with Kevlar since it was clearly severed. I didn’t and it wasn’t. I let it heal by itself (something he told me ligaments do not do) and even was able to ski on it with a brace. Then, in 1995 I reinjured it while in Geneva with my son, Roger. I’m not sure why Europe seems to want to mess with me and my knees. This time I went to a top-notch orthopedic surgeon in New York who told me he needed to scope the knee, meaning go in and arthroscopically examine it. I said he could only do it with local anesthesia and he refused, so we agreed on an MRI instead. What it showed was that the “severed” ACL was only ¼” torn and fully healed with scar tissue (double what?) and Thank God I hadn’t had it replaced with Kevlar since they were taking out Kevlar these days since it was problematic for several reasons. So much for listening to surgical specialists. Once again I let it heal itself and kept right on skiing with that brace.
I have had a few aches and pains in other joints like my shoulder and hips, but they seem to come and go, the operative word being go. If they came and stayed that would be one thing, but when they go I think it means that its good that I didn’t take any surgical action. My brother-in-law Woo, who spent a career as a naval helicopter pilot in places like Antarctica had shoulder surgery. Finally after several corrective surgeries to solve a major internal infection, he got the problem resolved but was told to be careful since any trauma was likely to have him walking off minus one arm. My other brother-in-law, who I just had dinner with and who is my age and uses a bright red walker now to very slowly get from the restaurant to the car, has had multiple knee and shoulder surgeries, but also had several spinal surgeries in the last year. One of those surgeries knicked his spinal dura and has left him permanently disabled and functionally unable to walk. He is a shadow of his former self and when he spoke to a liability attorney, he was told that 17% of all surgeries get screwed up more-or-less the same way. I can’t validate that statistic, but I sure don’t like how it sounds.
My friend Mike, who is a good six or seven years my junior and weighs less than half of what I do, had a hip replacement last year. He recovered well and is back playing shortstop in his Senior Softball League and getting MVP kudos for most games. Mike is out on the roads walking miles and miles every day as well as going to the gym for weight training. He is a firm believer in the whole motion/lotion equation. My other friend Gary, who turns eighty this year (and doesn’t look it by many years) and who has lost half a lung along the way and broken his femur badly a few years ago doing what I call the underwear dance and falling over, also hits the treadmill every day, whipped along by his partner, Oswaldo. They have all learned the motion lesson and put it to good use.
I have been thinking about the whole joint issue of late as I work through my seventieth year and watch my in-laws slowly suffering from immobility more and more. Kim gets out there and mobilizes twice a day on long walks with Betty on her artificial knees (Kim’s, not Betty’s). She also works out two or three times per week. I walk with Kim occasionally, or more accurately, shuffle along behind her. I do that specifically to keep myself in walking condition for our trips, where I hate being left on the roadside bench while others climb the mountain. It helped in Egypt and Jordan this year and I expect it to help in Laos and Cambodia next year. My main source of motion continues to be on my back hillside and in my garden. I don’t know why, but working up a sweat and flexing my muscles and joints on something productive like that suits me so much more than walking the local roads or going to the gym to move weights up and down. I have heard all the arguments for weight training and aerobic exercise and I just find that huffing and puffing and straining my joints and muscles in my own way while getting dirty is just more to my liking and therefore more sustainable for me.
Let’s face it, sustainability is the key to any exercises program. You have to keep doing it and doing it and then doing it again. I have proven to myself that the gym is not the way for that to happen for me. I have also proven to myself that I can do the road work if I am either not in the garden for seasonal reasons or if I have a specific goal like an upcoming trip. During the rest of the year, there are weeds to be pulled, mulch to be hauled and rocks to be moved from here to there. I did all three of those activities just today, and yesterday, and will do more of that most of the days of the weeks ahead. I don’t know what the step-equivalent of my hillside work is, nor do I know the caloric content. What I do know is that since I’ve been out on this hillside, my weight is as low as it has been during my adult life and everything is still working for me despite my advancing age.
I do notice that after sitting and writing or working on my iPad for long periods of time, the getting up is both a struggle and achy for a few moments, but I notice that is pretty much the same to varying degrees for everyone my age. I think the answer to that is to try to mobilize regularly enough rather than staying sedentary for too long. That said, its harder to do than to contemplate. Instead, I just mobilize carefully and make sure to remember that the secret to longevity is to take your time getting there.