Marian Ronan

Getting Older

A while ago—twenty years or so, I’d say—a number of liberal Protestant church leaders from the New York area, their spouses and families, owned summer homes in a town up in Maine. Dibbie and Bill Webber, Dodie and George Younger were two such couples. At a certain point, they began a discussion group called “We Are All Growing Older.”

Having such group struck me as wise. And I certainly didn’t disagree with the thesis. Of course, we’re all getting older.

On the other hand, my admiration and agreement were, I now realize, a bit theoretical. We’re all getting  older, but not yet, God willing.

Beginning in April of 2014 I began rethinking this. As I described it some months later, that was when Keith, my husband, began a year of serious illnesses, punctuated by the death of his mother. After pneumonia, surgery for two unrelated forms of cancer, plantar fasciitis in both his feet, burying his mother, and a stress fracture in his ankle, things calmed down a bit, but not enough to allow me to slide back into my prior sense of immortality.

Just lately we seem to be having round two, though on a much smaller scale. More than a year ago I began experiencing tingling—what we called “pins and needle” back in the day—in my hands and feet. The somewhat worthless internist I consulted was in a hurry and pooh-poohed it. A year later, when it hadn’t gone away, I consulted a new doctor, who sent me to a neurologist, who did a whole long string of tests–poking, sticking, mild electrocution. Then he said, “Well, the tingling in your hands is a sign of essential tremor and carpal tunnel syndrome; the tingling in your feet is caused, I believe, by a lower back problem.” He ordered an MRI to explore the latter.

It all seemed a little much—three diagnoses in one day. Then, the following week, one of my molars got an infection and our splendid dentist announced that I had to have it and the guy next to it out and replace them with implants. Yesterday the extractions occurred and I got three slots drilled into the bone underneath the former teeth in preparation for the implants. At the same time I have been doing carpal tunnel exercises everyday, wearing carpal tunnel splints to bed at night, and going to physical therapy for my back.

I will spare you the whining and lamenting. A lot of the people out here in the middle of Brooklyn couldn’t begin to afford the implants I’m getting. And when I’m at the physical therapy office, a number of patients come in all twisted up with arthritis, or needing a walker to walk, or otherwise in pain. And we discovered the carpal tunnel early, so I’m not likely to need surgery. Here, as at other times, being the oldest child of an Irish working-class family is a big help: just shut up and do the assignment, as the grown-ups used to say.

But I do think I’m going to postpone finishing Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Memory for a few days. Instead, maybe I’ll just binge-watch “Orange is the New Black”!