Month: July 2018

Buds for Buds

Posted on by thatsgettingold

Remember back in high school, when the cool kids had fake IDs made up so they could purchase alcohol while still underage?

Flash forward to today. The rage among sixty-somethings is the Medical Marijuana ID card. I can’t believe how many people have them … or that I don’t!! When I first saw it, I said to my friend, “How’d you get that?” He reminded me of his full-body rheumatoid arthritis, and I nodded my understanding.

When another friend this weekend showed me his ID card, I was flummoxed. That’s right, flummoxed, I tell ya. And flabbergasted. I was flummoxed AND flabbergasted!

“There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. How in the world did you qualify for a Medical Marijuana ID card?”

“Easy,” he replied. “I told my doctor I can’t sleep.”

“That’s it? You said you can’t sleep?”

“Yep. That’s it.” I still was flabbergasted, but flummoxed no longer.

“So how are you sleeping?”

“Like a frickin’ baby. Always did!”

How many of us sleep well in the “aging population” demographic? Not many. So, if a hit on a bong, a toke on a pipe, or a draw on a vape pen gets you through the night, it’s all right… it’s all right.

But all this got me to thinking. Here’s a data point I found on the Internet, so it must be true: The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to more than double from 46 million today to over 98 million by 2060, and the 65-and-older age group’s share of the total population will rise to nearly 24 percent from 15 percent.

Here’s another data point I’ve Googled: Northwestern Mutual’s 2018 Planning & Progress Study, which surveyed 2,003 adults, found that 78 percent of Americans say they’re ‘extremely’ or ‘somewhat’ concerned about not having enough money for retirement. Another 66 percent believe that they’ll outlive their retirement savings. A shocking 21 percent of Americans have nothing at all saved for the future, and another 10 percent have less than $5,000 socked away for their golden years, the study found.

Now, I’m not here to advocate for marijuana use, legality, or anything else. But do the math. You’re going to go broke, and your peers are clamoring for pain relief. It’s likely you’re not a chemist, and don’t have a lab to start producing Percocet and Xanax. (If you are, and do, message me privately!)  But you likely have a garden. For the cost of some seed, you too can become a Little Organic Pharma (that’s how we say farmer here on Long Island)! You’ll augment your paltry savings while helping to end the suffering of tens of your friends, or business networking pretend-friends, or whoever you’re running with (ahem.. walking with) these days.

No need to thank me. Keep on truckin’!

 

Ya gotta have heart

Posted on by thatsgettingold

I began this website as kind of a way to look at the funny things about getting older…forgetting basically every name I ever knew, not to mention song titles, movie actors and more. Now I watch ‘Jeopardy’ and instead of beating the contestants to the answers, I go, ‘Oh, right, I know this…’ but of course can’t come up with it.

Then something really scary happened to me a few months back. As the proud owner of three cardiac stents, I went for a routine nuclear stress test (talk about your oxymorons!). I was confident. “I feel great, no problems here,” I thought to myself. “I’m gonna kill it.” It turned out it almost killed me!!

As I’m walking on the treadmill, with the incline growing higher and the speed increasing, the operator says, ‘Can you go 30 more seconds?’ I go, ‘piece of cake’ – ‘cause I really wanted a piece of cake — and I kick it into high gear. Suddenly, though, the operator stops the test, injects something into my arm and the cardiologist comes in and says he’s calling an ambulance to take me to the hospital. “What? Why?,” I asked. Something about ventricular tachycardia. I had to look it up too.

He showed me the EKG from the test. Imagine if you gave a 3-year-old a crayon and told the kid to just draw anything. That was my EKG.

Now, after three days in the hospital, I am the proud owner of FOUR stents and a defibrillator/pacemaker combo package. Two for one…such a deal!

And also now, the medical people have my attention.

You see, for me, one of the things that makes you feel old is when you can’t eat that piece of chocolate cake anymore, or the bacon cheeseburger deluxe with French fries AND onion rings! Or that greasy pizza with pepperoni. You never see old people eating this stuff (at least not the smart ones!) They eat fish, and vegetables and drink water. To steal the punchline from an old joke: “and such small portions!”

Another is when you finally drop all the weight they tell you to, and people now look at you and gasp, and whisper out of earshot (which is now about an inch and a half), “Is he sick?” I yell, “WHAT???”

Yet worst of all is when family and friends stop letting you do anything. “Put down those folding chairs; I’ll have the kids carry them downstairs.” Or, “leave the suitcase. I’ll put it in the overhead bin for you.” Or, “Am I walking too fast for you?”

A doctor friend of mine called this being a “cardiac cripple.”

For me, I feared that giving in to their way of thinking would make me feel old. The hardest part of all this has been the mental, not the physical. I never had pain, never felt bad. But you naturally start to question yourself. Am I no longer the vibrant guy I was? Do people look at me differently now, as somehow being more frail? Can I still do most of what I used to do?

I’m here to tell you the answer to the last question above is YES! My doctor said I could return to 75 percent of what I did before until I healed up and rested up more. (Did someone just tell me to rest??  Did you hear that, dear? My doctor said I have to REST!!  And no more snow shoveling!! Be careful out there!)

As for getting back to what I did before, some quick math revealed that 75 percent of lying on the couch is STILL lying on the couch! I felt better already!

So I’ll skip the burger meals, cut down on sugars and carbs, but I WON’T start eating dinner at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I put on a button-down shirt, tie and blazer to take a walk in the mail! A white belt?? Kill me now!!

We ARE, after all, getting older. But we don’t have to give in to it. You’re as young as you feel. While physically the age thing is starting to be a pain – well, more than one — I take solace in knowing that mentally, I’m still the same stupid 12-year-old I’ve always been!

<Fart sound here>