Growing Younger

Here's some bad news that is rapidly growing worse: For the fifth straight day Saturday the U.S. reported a record new number of Covid-19 cases.

The worst place to be for getting this disease is in a nursing home. As the Times reports this morning, "At least 54,000 residents and workers have died from the coronavirus at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for older adults in the United States, according to a New York Times database. As of (Friday), the virus has infected more than 282,000 people at some 12,000 facilities."

That translates into 11 percent of the U.S. pandemic cases have occurred in long-term care facilities, and 43 percent of the fatalities.

So you are four times more likely to die from the coronavirus if you stay in one of those places than anywhere else.

So what is the solution?

Get out if you can. Get your loved ones out if you can.

Once you reach your 60s, 70s, 80s, going downhill is not necessarily inevitable. But if you live only among elderly people, there is a deadly culture that will engulf you.

Partly it is the kindness of care-givers.

"Can't stand up? We'll help you. Trouble walking? Here, you use this cane, this walker, or just sit in this wheelchair."

If you have trouble feeding yourself, they'll help. If doing your laundry seems too great a chose, they'll do it for you. As for more personal bodily functions, there are always adult diapers.

What all this care accomplishes, although offered with the best of intentions, is a fast-track to your grave.

If you stop taking care of yourself, your body will start shutting down until you *cannot* take care of yourself.

An alternative is to turn it all around and take a different path, the one offered by physical therapists. Day by day, you can rebuild all of your abilities until you can be self-sufficient once again.

I'm living proof this is true. A year ago, I was living the nightmare, moving facility to facility, where wonderful people took care of me. The occasional nurse would point out to me that it didn't need to be that way; that if I were willing to work at it, mine could be a different fate.

This isn't to say getting better after a stroke, pneumonia, hepatitis, and a presumed diagnosis of Parkinson's is easy; it isn't. But a philosophy of improving one task day by day, little by little, can yield results over time.

It's exactly like writing. Over the years, my many writing students often complained they couldn't get started. I'd advise them to start anywhere that came to mind, just create a lead sentence, and see what happens.

One of the best writers I know started a piece one time 40 years ago with this, "Imagine a line..."

With those three words, he created a context, set up expectations, and guaranteed you would move on to his next line.

That's what writing is all about. I've been posting these essays to Facebook in earnest since the early days of Corona-V. Many mornings I have no idea what I am going to say on that particular day.

But I start, trusting the process that I've used for decades.

This is not to say I'm a great writer; I'm not. In fact, I am far better at conversation in person than writing remotely. But as we're locked down and can't meet up for coffee or a beer, I'm willing to do my share of the work in the meantime.

If you are one of the lucky ones who can arrange for an elderly relative to join your household, some benefits may accrue. Most old people have a well-hones sense of humor, perhaps fatalistic, that can lighten the burden of living in place, social distancing, and the like.

Old people, generally speaking, don't eat as much or sleep as much as younger people. On the negative side, they may nap at a moment's notice, get up at 3 a.m. for no known reason, and wander around the property aimlessly.

Old people may ramble a bit when they tell stories, even after they've told you that particular story numerous times before. Most oldsters become adept at covering up some of this mental decline; they'll say "as old what's-his-name used to say...", knowing the name will come to them in an hour or so, or maybe a day or two.

Physical faculties like seeing and hearing may weaken but there are solutions for those things, usually.

All of this aside, I found while living among old people that they generally are the keepers of some pretty good stories.

As I was hanging out with some of my grandchildren in the mountains recently, it was easy to see they were bored. No cellphones, tablets, video games, TVs -- what were they to do?

So I started conversing with them.

"Imagine a line stretching from here to that mountain over there. What if you walked that line, what might happen? Who walked that same line 100 years ago and what was here then?"

It's never to late to start a new story, no matter what age you are.

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