Old age is a bitch.
We’re all turning into fossils around here. JayJay is 84 in dog years, Booger is 77, Charlie is 73 in human years, and I’m 71 years young.
Of course, Baby is…well, she’s a baby compared to us…only 2 (14 in dog years). She’s lucky; everything still works…and she flaunts it.
Jay has had colitis for about 6 weeks. This started up coincidentally with the eye ulcer and the antibiotics he had to take to cure that nasty problem. He just can’t win, although the rest of him (exclusive of his crappy eyes) works pretty well. He’s still got an overabundance of personality and a bounce in his step. Considering that he was abandoned in a house in the desert without food or water when he was about 2-1/2 years old, Jay has come a long way, health-wise, and he seems to appreciate his good fortune.
Poor Booger has some type of irritation of her private parts. She’s been scooting around right after urinating. I think it’s urethritis, or something like that. She also has conjunctivitis. We’ll have to take her to the vet this week. And, of course, she has pretty noticeable arthritis in her hips and legs. She still wants to play, but Baby literally runs circles around her. It’s amazing that they wrestle and compete so much, because Booger has got to be pretty sore. What a dog!
Charlie is always suffering from something. Of course, she had the broken back (since surgically repaired) simultaneous with joint inflammation in her hands (since cured with Voltaren gel). Those issues closely followed her cataract surgery, which was a success. At least she can see well again. Now, we await a visit with a plastic surgeon who, she hopes, can remove a lipoma that is located between her chest wall and one of her saline implants. Never a dull moment with my wife!
Yours truly is suffering this week from overdoing it last week; i.e. big hikes in Zion and Gunlock with the kids. My left hip, which is due for replacement because the ball socket is worn out, has been quite sore for days now. My orthopedic surgeon and I have agreed on a time schedule for the replacement surgery: it will be just after we return from our 3-month RV trip in October. That will give me a bit of recuperation time before the Holiday season.
In the meanwhile, I will have to put up with the daily onslaught of osteoarthritis, which plagues my hands, knees, and neck. It’s no fun, waking up each day to discover which one will drive me nuts. Actually, the knees aren’t that bad, because I get a SynVisc shot in each one annually. It really helps. But, there is no comparable treatment for my hands, so I just have to treat them nicely: no card shuffling, tightly grasping heavy objects, no bowling, etc. I have been able to hit golf balls, however. We’ll see how that goes.
My neck is going to be the biggest problem down the road. I’m pretty sure that I have arthritic bone spurs in my mid-cervical spine. Some days are miserable, where I can’t rotate my head much at all and I have a lot of pain just doing normal things. Then, I’ll go a couple of weeks without pain or significant restriction. (Actually, bad posture while typing my blog on the PC seems to stimulate my neck issues. Today, I’ve propped up my PC so that the screen is almost at eye level. Hopefully, that will help.)
Least I moan and groan too much, it is obvious that all of us old fogies (JayJay, Booger, Charlie and myself) have the same issue with Old Man Arthritis, who, by the way, is undefeated in his career. Eventually, everyone has to pay The Man for having a spine and limbs that wear out. We’re all on that glide path right now. It sucks.
On a brighter note, though, none of us has yet contracted a fatal disease or suffered some cataclysmic accident. We’ve been darned lucky, we all lived long and rewarding lives, and are quite appreciative of that.
As the saying goes, “Count your blessings.”