Yesterday, Charlie and I went up to St. George, Utah to meet our new internal medicine physician Dr. Bennett.
He was a nice guy and seemed pretty thorough. He seemed to be impressed by all of the medical issues that Charlie has had/still has. Before we left the facility, we’d both given urine and blood samples and Charlie got a bone scan to assess the state of her osteoporosis (brittle bones).
Today, Charlie got a call from Dr. Bennett’s office with the news that her osteoporosis is bad and that she will need to be infused with some kind of medicine for two hours once per year. Dr. Bennett also put Charlie on Vitamin C, D, and calcium supplements. These three pills are in addition to the couple of dozen pills that she takes each day for a myriad of health issues.
I marvel at the toughness of my wife as she deals with numerous maladies every day and hardly complains. She has a mutant gene that causes her to produce blood clots each day and is fitted with an inferior vena cava “basket” which catches those clots before they can get into her lungs and cause a pulmonary embolus (which is often fatal). Her body also regularly produces lipomas, and she has scores of them all over her extremities. Charlie has screws in one of her knees that hold her patella in place. She has a pacemaker to keep her from having any more heart attacks (she’s had several). She’s also a tad shorter than she used to be, probably thanks to the compression fracture of one of her lumbar vertebrae a few years ago.
Charlie has also experienced a double mastectomy and is currently recovering from a broken foot. In addition, she suffers from macular degeneration in her eyes and incontinence from problems in her nether regions.
I am surprised that any doctor would agree to manage her health issues, so kudos to Dr. Bennett and the whole staff at Revere Health. We are lucky to live where we do and have such great medical care available to us.
I have lived a charmed life, medically speaking. I’ve had a couple of surgeries to repair worn out knees, shoulder, and hips, and I have osteoarthritis like most old people. I take one prescription pill a day (Crestor for cholesterol) and various vitamins and supplements in the hopes that they will keep my joints working adequately. So far, so good: I still hike off-trail in the local mountains.
Both Charlie and I are 15 to 20 pounds overweight. This is probably due to decreased activity as we have aged. The added weight seems to have stabilized (been the same for the past six months; if it doesn’t get worse, we can live with it.
Charlie is 77 and I will turn 75 in a few weeks. We’ve been together for almost fifty years and have lived active and rewarding lives. We’ve been blessed.
I don’t know how much longer we have together but we are going to try to enjoy this journey as long as we can. Hopefully, Dr. Bennett and his peers will keep us out of trouble.