Tag: old age

Daily Life, Health, Motivation

And The Answer Is…

If you’ve been following along at home, you’ll remember that I recently did something I shouldn’t have done. I thought I was twenty again and spent the day lifting furniture. I figured I’m a dude, so of course I can still do that sort of thing. The problem is that as you age the connective tissue becomes less supple and thinner. Years of slowly becoming deconditioned take their toll. The end result is injury.

In my case it’s a hernia and a separated linea alba. My abdominal muscles pulled apart, allowing the tissue below to bulge out. Yesterday I got the official word – lots of PT and surgery.

Age is a weird thing. It creeps up on you. Mentally I certainly don’t feel old. Up until recently I didn’t feel terribly old physically either. Oh sure, I couldn’t do things to the level I could when I was younger – but I was still out there doing it. I’ve always felt that compared to lots of guys my age I’m doing pretty good.

But this year felt different. Especially this summer. Yes I’ve put on weight before and felt various levels of stronger/weaker throughout the years, but the last six months I just haven’t had the mojo. Body parts just hurt. My eyes changed and I had to get new glasses. My balance is noticeably worse. I’ve had lots of little nagging injuries. And my weight, and the motivation to do anything about it, just hasn’t budged.

For the first time, I honestly feel old.

And now this. The unfortunate part is that the warning signs were flashing neon red. Rapid weight gain. A low back injury last year was the foreshadowing that my transverse abdominals were weak and deconditioned. I skied a bunch last winter, but otherwise didn’t do much physical activity. For a variety of reasons, my usual summer activities (hiking, mountain biking, motorcycle riding, etc…) have been pretty sparse this year. Long story short, there’s been more sitting than moving.

A perfect recipe for injury. An older adult going from the couch to moving furniture, or trying out pickleball, or deciding to take up running again, or even just stepping off an awkward height is just asking for problems. As Dr. Peter Attia writes in his book “Outlive”, once you reach your mid-50’s you’re no longer building muscle and strength – you’re desperately trying to maintain what you have. The moment you stop moving, you start going backwards in terms of physical ability.

Muscles atrophy, connective tissue weakens, tendons and ligaments are no longer supple. The key is to recognize the limitations. Unless you’ve continued to actively train, the days of doing box jumps, hill sprints, and explosive dynamic movements are probably in the rear-view mirror. That doesn’t mean you can’t get back to some form of those things… but you need to go very slow and carefully to avoid injury.

Mentally it’s hard to come to grips with that. In my head I’ve always thought that if I just got motivated for a few months and lost a few pounds, I’d be right back to where I was three or four years ago. Reality has a way of itch-slapping you in the face.

The Dr was pretty blunt. The surgical recovery won’t be too bad. Four weeks of not lifting anything. I should be able to ski in six weeks, although not at 100%. It’ll all be dependent on how motivated I am with PT (Hmm, sounds just like I used to lecture my post–operative patients about. What goes around, comes around).

The good news is that the doc cleared me to do any activities I want leading up to the surgery. I won’t make things any worse at this point. The harder I work now, the better my recovery will be. It looks like I have eight weeks to get ready.

Let’s do this.

Daily Life, Health, Motivation

That’s Going To Leave A Mark

I remember the days when you never had to think about doing things. Jumping over fences, climbing trees, picking things up, and running were all activities you took for granted. You just did them. You didn’t worry about stretching beforehand, ensuring you’d eaten enough protein, or if you were using proper form. I think in my head I still feel like that person much of the time. Reality has a way of reminding you those days are gone.

I did what every old man should avoid. I spent a day picking up and moving heavy furniture. I actually felt pretty good doing it. I never felt like I strained terribly hard or had to struggle to lift something. I was tired at the end of the day, but was pleased with myself for the effort I put in. I went to bed satisfied with a good day’s work.

The next morning I did a sit up to get out of bed and a huge alien looking thing popped straight out of my abdomen. I immediately laid back down. Holy shit, what was that? I slowly sat back up and my abdomen had that same big bulge projecting out in an unnatural way. I gingerly pushed and prodded a bit to see if it would go away. I laid back down and closed my eyes for a few minutes. I had a pretty good idea of what happened.

I was in such denial that I ignored it for most of the morning and went about my business. It was approaching lunch time and I snuck back into the bedroom to lay down and see if it was still there. Crap. I knew I was going to need to see a doctor. I reluctantly called in Mrs Troutdog and showed her. She was understandably alarmed. “Oh my god, what is that?”, she exclaimed. That sealed the deal. Off to the walk-in clinic I went.

Long story short I’ve either torn or separated the linea alba. That’s the connective tissue that holds the abdominal muscles together. Sigh.

I don’t know what it means yet. I have a surgical consult next week to see what, if anything, needs to be done about it. The initial doctor said twisting motions should be fine, but don’t be lifting anything. I’m unclear if I can ride a bike, motorcycle, etc…

My prediction is that the answer will be lose weight, strengthen the transverse abdominals, don’t do crunches, sit ups, or deadlifts, and work with physical therapy for some number of weeks. But who knows? Maybe it will require a surgical repair.

My fear is that my new reality will be a long-term limitation to activities in some fashion regardless of the answer. It also means that getting serious about the weight loss, and proper strength training, are no longer optional. Will I have the discipline to actually follow through with it? It’s ironic – as an RN I lectured countless post operative patients that their quality of life will now be dependent upon how dedicated were towards rehab and PT. I’d give a judgmental look at a patient and just know that they won’t do anything to help themselves, and will show up with the same problem a few years down the road.

Looks like I’m finally going to have to eat my own words.

As Dirty Harry said in the movie Magnum Force, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Clearly, I didn’t know mine.

Health, Motivation

It Just Hurts

When I first started out as an RN, I’ll admit I got a bit judgmental sometimes towards certain patients. It was the folks who were fairly obese, in their late 60’s or early 70’s, and lacked the strength to get off the toilet or out of a chair. As two and sometimes three of us struggled to get them standing so they could shuffle back to bed, I’d say to myself “how could anyone let themselves get to that point?” They’d reject the physical therapists who came to work with them, saying they were too tired or hurt too much to do anything today. I’d do my best to encourage them, often admonishing them that if they didn’t start moving things were only going to get worse.

I just couldn’t fathom wanting to spend your remaining years in that condition. Why didn’t they take better care of themselves? One of the more common problems we’d see with this patient population was toenails. Nasty curled and twisted daggers that hadn’t been cut in god knows how long. Often they couldn’t wear socks anymore because you couldn’t pull them on without snagging on the nails. They’d just resort to wearing sandals or slippers all the time. Why? Because they’d become so deconditioned, they couldn’t bend over enough to clip their own toenails. It just seemed so crazy to me. And when they wouldn’t work with therapy and rejected most advice to do something, anything, to help themselves… I’ll admit I developed a certain lack of sympathy.

Fast forward to today. I hurt. Everywhere. I can barely lift my arms over my head. I look like an 80-year-old walking down the stairs. The moaning and groaning when I attempt to get down on the ground is ridiculous. Why am I in this state? Well… my back injury scared me enough that I’m going full speed, hard core, with my workouts. Every day has been at least an hour in the gym. Stretching, mobility work, kettle bells, club bells, lunges, squats, medicine balls… every exercise I can find on YouTube. Plus another hour and a half of hiking hills with the dog.

The end result is that I’m sore. Everywhere. There isn’t a body part that doesn’t hurt right now. Yes, I realize that I’m probably overtraining a bit. But I’m scared. The back strain was a brief window into a potential future if I don’t fix things. And I don’t like the future I saw.

Reality, as they say, came up and bitch slapped me in the face. I was forced to admit to myself the true, current state of all things physical. I’ve never been very physically strong, so I tended to avoid gym work. I was pretty good with endurance stuff, so that’s what I did. I mountain biked, skied, and ran. And I told myself I was in decent shape. Yes, cardiovascular-wise I was. But year after year my muscles were atrophying. Now, years of ignoring strength conditioning have caught up to me. I strained my back badly while sweeping leaves. Yes, really.

Muscle atrophy and weight gain are insidious creatures. They sneak up on you. Every year a little weaker, a little heavier. As it creeps up on you, your motivation to do something about it gets less and less. Sure, you try here and there to diet or start working out again, but it’s hard. The weight doesn’t come off and you end up hungry and frustrated. Your attempts to work out leave you sore and unable to walk. It’s really hard to keep getting after it when you feel like that. Pretty quickly you abandon the diet and give up the workouts. And the atrophy keeps setting in.

And that’s where I had a very real insight into how those patients let themselves go. And I feel bad for not having more empathy for them all those years ago. It would be so easy to do. I hurt, I’m sore, I’m tired. At my age, do I really need to be trying to lift weights? Let’s just stop. A heating pad and some pain pills will make me comfortable. Blink my eyes and I’ll be that old guy struggling to get off the toilet.

No. I’m not going to do that. I refuse to give up. I know that if I just keep pushing, eventually the soreness goes away. Muscles and tendons will become more supple. The aches and pains get better. Mobility and balance improve. I will not let atrophy win.

I’ll just have to wear hats for a while… my arms hurt too much to brush my hair.

Health

It’s All About The Butt, Baby

I just got back from the gym. Spent a bunch of time with the strength coach trying to figure out how to fix my back issue. After a lot of pain, tests, and movement analysis the verdict is in. My problem is that I don’t have a butt. None. Zero. My legs just end at my hips.

More specifically, a major part of my problem is that I never engage my glutes when moving. Like, at all. Rotation, lifting, bending, walking, running… my back is doing all the work. And because I have a weak core, it was only a matter of time before something gave out. This also explains why I can’t dance.

The good news is that it’s fixable (maybe not the dancing). The bad news is that it’s going to hurt and it’s not going to suddenly get better overnight. Why-oh-why didn’t I figure this out thirty years ago?

Back in the stone age when I was in high school, there should have been an “adulthood 101” class. The value of compound interest. Investing. Changing a tire. What to make for dinner for the next 50 years. The importance of an actual, daily, fitness regime. Instead, we learned the quadratic equation on the off chance we might someday work with gravitational physics. Oh, and dodgeball.

So here we are. An aging adult who now has to learn how to engage a major muscle group and build up some significant strength – or face daily pain and physical limitations for the next twenty years. Yeah, that’s not intimidating at all.

I was watching show last night that described the decline in physical fitness in the US since the ’60s. The difference in where we are today vs back then is shocking. How in the world did we let that happen as a society? It’s really criminal. The scary part? I don’t think it’s reversible. Excluding some sort of apocalyptic survival of the fittest event… you’re not going to convince 300 million people to suddenly get off the couch every day. Back then President JFK actually said, “…there is nothing “more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat-looking children.” Today, any politician that dared to suggest such a thing for our schoolkids would be instantly shouted down and cancelled. It’s discriminatory. We don’t have the funding. It shames kids who aren’t athletic. It’s racist. We can’t hurt their self-esteem. Besides, it’s really hard to have a proper PE class over Zoom.

I’m now faced with a hard decision. I either find a way to push through pain, change my daily routine, and learn a new athletic skill at my age… or I move to the couch, seek out a Norco or Oxy prescription, and accept that my ability to ski, play golf, ride the mountain bike, run, and hike is fading.

I don’t like either choice. I want to go back to the days when I could just do stuff and not worry about injury or pain. I don’t like strength training, never have. I get zero enjoyment from going to the gym. But I don’t like pills and I don’t want to give up my activities. It’s a quandry.

I’m not a quitter. Hopefully, this is the catalyst to make those necessary health changes I’ve been meaning to get around to. Because as a very wise man once said, “I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.”

The Dude abides. Now excuse me, I’m headed to the gym.