Once you hit
fifty, watch out! Everything starts to go.
How many
times have you heard this and thought, not me! I exercise, take care of myself,
don’t smoke. My body won’t betray me. I will be the exception.
I remember
being in my early forties, in the hale of good health and watching with some
irritation as one thing after another started bringing down my husband, ten
years my senior. First it was his heart (a frightening arrhythmia) then his hip
(a 3 year nightmare waiting for a steel replacement), his eyes (getting worse),
both knees (barely hanging on as we speak), etc., etc.
Won’t happen
to me, I continued to tell myself. No way.
And then I
met the personal trainer from hell who bullied me into performing exercises
meant for a twenty year old hard body, not a fifty year old, menopausal noodle
body. And everything went to hell. A frozen shoulder followed by bursitis in
both elbows and a pinched nerve between L4 and L5 that can cause a screaming
back spasm if I merely twist the wrong way. Plantar fasciitis in one foot,
bursitis developing in one hip and the resulting lack of exercise causing the
only muscle tissue I have left to soften and spread, like glutinous margarine
left in the sun.
I am now
relegated to mincing my way through the new Jane Fonda fitness videos designed
for older people and I just can’t believe it.
How did this
happen to me?
Limitations
placed on us by our aging bodies seems to be the new reality, no matter how
hard we try to convince ourselves that it will not happen to us.
