I am not going to say I’m old. I don’t feel emotionally “old” and I have friends, born before me, who would be annoyed to think they must be even more “old.”
I am certain, however, that I’m over the hill and entering the domino years. What that means is as one thing goes wrong, treatment for it makes something else worse! When I go barefoot, my fascia freeze. When I wear flip-flops, my ankle pops. Then I walk around in an ankle wrap, my knee hurts by the end of the day. Pretty soon my hip goes pinchy and I can’t sleep. And don’t even get me started on getting up in the morning and bones start popping like gunfire. Ergo, I am just going to say it is a total drag to not be young any more.
So, I’m going to do something I have never ever done before; my new year resolution is to eat better. I refused in the past because healthy food is gross to me. And, really, when you’re young, you can wash down a trash bag full of popcorn with Mountain Dew and take a nap. Today I eat a baby gherkin and I get a headache from high blood pressure. Although I did read recently that sprinkling nearly anything with MSG will make it tasty and it’s not at all the unhealthy bad rap people give it. (I’m talking to YOU, broccoli!)
So the reason I am caving and planning to make a bona fide effort is that on a Sunday morning about a month ago, I woke up sweating, feeling like I was dying. For real. I had vertigo, nausea, weakness and pain in my chest. Awesome.
When I was 27 and woke up like that, it would have been a Monday morning and I had cheered five hours at a Redskin game the day before, then joined squadmates at our favorite bar in Fairfax for a few beers and dancing until 2am. Glass of water, little bit of make-up and off to work.
Turns out—I think—rather than sneaking up on me slowly, “the change” hit me like a herd of elephants and my hormones now resemble the inside of a lotto ball machine, so I find myself daily wanting to burn down the world for no apparent reason. And for a person who spent her entire life complaining about being cold—wearing socks to bed year-round and sweaters in 80-degree weather—I am fully unprepared for hot flashes.
Also at 50, the virtual reality glasses I got for Christmas gave me “simulator sickness” and I Googled vertigo for an hour trying not to throw up. Well, one of the helpful cures for vertigo is caffeine. Well that’s great. I can’t have caffeine in the morning because that aggravates my Reflux. I have *that* because I don’t eat enough acidic food because I can’t tolerate PTC in bitter foods and my body makes extra acid to keep the balance. Delightful.
Oh, and I have also developed new allergies and sensitive skin in my sixth decade of life. How does this happen? Doctors tell us to get plenty of sleep to avoid Alzheimer’s but that’s impossible when you develop a plague of hives around 3am because you ate a dark chocolate peanut M&M. Oh, dark chocolate will help mood swings but stay off the chocolate to keep your stomach valves from relaxing too much. Take allergy pills to get back to sleep, which makes me groggy in the morning, so I have caffeine… wait, no… never mind.
Remember when we were young and a serious injury was a broken arm from back-handsprings, pulled muscle from running or broken nose from doing fun things? Now I wake up with body pains because I slept “wrong” or I sneezed too hard and wrenched my back. Or ate pizza.
I wish I could blame it on motherhood but, really, it’s about not being young any more. Aging is just a really long process and a depressing prospect. Also, a lot of the things women complain about childbirth happened to me before I had my son at 41. So ladies, go ahead and have kids or not… stuff is still going to fall, leak, or sabotage your sleep for many years.
Even my iWatch is freaking me out. My heart monitor showed my heart rate spiked to 106 the other day… at 6pm… I was browning hamburger and if I recall, nothing was on fire so what the heck was that all about?
While I realize I am a generally healthy person who is complaining (and sharing) way too much, I suppose I am letting others know that they are not alone. One of my favorite things on the Internet is a really weird post or TMI share that makes me say, “Gross! But wow I’m glad I’m not the only one who has that.”
So I’ve started by eating oatmeal for breakfast. It apparently lowers my cholesterol, doesn’t aggravate GERD and I can put non-chocolate soy milk in it to keep my hormones off the ceiling. Lord!…it is boring, but anything is better than a vegetable. I can see why people have eaten it for 300 years. Couple of spoonfuls and I’m stuffed, so maybe I’ll even lose the belly fat people say is a cardiac risk (I give up!). The original superfood, and way cheaper than quinoa, whatever that is.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try it with MSG.