Old Man Experience

This is another in the Sunday Story Series.  No politics here, just a story from someone beginning life with a Medicare card in his wallet.

 Red-White and Blue Club

I turned sixty-five last September.  This morning I realized that in five weeks, I’ll be sixty-six – so much older it seems, than just “Medicare age”.  And I’ve spent the last couple of months doing “Medicare” kind of things, using my Red-White and Blue Medicare ID card.  

When you first reach “this age”, you get a free medical appointment.  In fact, you are required to participate in the “free” appointment as a condition of getting Medicare.  Since I had my last physical just a couple weeks before my last birthday, I put off getting my “free” one until the summer (or until my physician started warning me about the “dire” consequences of skipping the “introductory” exam).  

Look, I’ve had enough health conditions that I’m a pretty steady, once a year physical kind of guy.   Getting an annual was long on my calendar before I reached Medicare age.  So I scheduled for early in the morning, as usual.  That way when they wanted to do blood tests, fasting wasn’t an issue. I usually don’t eat much in the AM anyway.  As long as they don’t worry about super-high-insanely-tenacious black coffee, I’m a pretty happy guy.  Without the coffee, I’m a danger on the road, and asleep in the waiting room.

State of Head

But what I wasn’t prepared for was “the quiz”.  You see, when you enter Medicare, the physician is required to evaluate your mental state.   They’re searching for signs of dementia, or Alzheimer’s (even if it takes the spell checker to get that right).  So you have to take the test.  First, there are three words – random words like:  banana, sunrise, chair.  The lady testing  just says them, then moves onto other questions.

“Am I dizzy often, do I fall a lot, do I feel safe at home, do I forget where I’m going?”.  Next, it’s the draw the clock test – where do the hands go if it’s 11:10.  Of course, I try to side-track the test (just like every student I ever taught); “what happens when the generation arrives that doesn’t do analog time?”  The tester stumbles for a second, then comes back with, “Well anyone your age should be able to, so draw the clock”.  I carefully suppress the urge to write 11:10, and  put the short hand where 11 goes, and the long hand at 2.  I hope she can tell the difference.

The Big Question

So it’s been a few minutes, and the focus has been on being dizzy (not often), falling (I don’t), getting lost (not that either), safe. (Well there are five dogs, but other than that. Oh, and I do trip over a dog from time to time, especially if I stand up too fast).  And then the entire clock conversation.  But the “BIG” question comes back up  – what were those three words again.  

I hadn’t thought about them, didn’t create a mnemonic to remember them, like the phases of cell replication that my freshman Biology teacher Mr. Sproul taught us – Pre Med at Texas (prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase – with interphase in the middle).  And maybe that’s a clue to “Medicare” age: I can remember Pre Med at Texas, and the five members of the Rolling Stones (Jagger, Richards, Woods, Watts, and Wyman), but for a brief moment there’s this blank in my head, a pause.  I stall – “do they need to be in order?”   (Here’s your test – don’t look back – what were the words??)   Then it’s there:  xxxxx, xxxxx, and my least favorite food of all, xxxxx.  The tester nods, I am cleared from dementia for my first Medicare year: whew!!

Going Slow

Next, it’s onto the ECG, checking out my frequently confused cardiac system.  Remember, it’s only 8 am, and I didn’t work out before I came here.  And I’ve been sitting around for a while.  I lay back on the table, watch the sticky tabs placed on my chest (why, oh why, do they keep those damn things in the refrigerator?) and relax as she hooks up the wires.  She runs the test, no paper rolls anymore, it’s now all onto a laptop.  Then she frowns, and says let’s do that again.  So I get a little drowsier.

It seems my heart rate is at fifty-one, and it’s confusing the computer program.  Now, given the situation, reclined, early morning, not enough of the super-high-insanely-tenacious black coffee in my system, I’m just glad my heart’s breaking fifty.  I run low, from fifty-five years of workouts and low thyroid, and it kicks up just fine when I need it.  To get back to that dizzy question, the better shape I get in, the more often I’ll get dizzy from a “head rush”, standing up too fast.  That’s because I jump up in between beats and it takes a second for the blood to catch up.  Being in shape means fewer heart beats.

We don’t go into any great explanation, but now there’s a new “term” in my chart – “bradycardia”.  Click on the link – what used to be a goal when I was younger now sounds terrible.  It’s really not; just being me, and the Doc isn’t concerned.  It’s not a thing.  But there’s that word.

What Did You Say?

So my Doc, (he’s about thirty-five, I picked one that I hope will outlive me), does the usual exam, listening to my heart and checking the numbers.  He says I’m fine, and wonders if I have any concerns.  I tell him that I sometimes struggle to hear certain sounds, conversations in crowds, and the nine-year-old kid next door.  So he sets me up for a hearing test.  And that becomes the next Medicare “challenge”.  

The last time I was in an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist’s office, I was fifteen and a wrestler.  Bob Rosenthal kneed me in the face during a wrestle-off , and my nose was definitely closer to the right side of my face than the left.  It took surgery, and a couple of weeks off of the mat, but old Doc Sidney Peerless got my nose back headed in the right general location.

So this week I went to an ENT here in Columbus (Peerless was in Cincinnati, and passed away at eighty-four in 2006) to get my hearing checked.  The first thing I noticed:  all of the staff speak loudly and annunciate carefully, not just to me, but to everyone in the room.  I guess if there’s a place to speak up, the “ear doctor” would be it.

Buzzing my Ear

My first stop was for the “dreaded” hearing test.  You go into a sound proof booth and they seal a pair of tight fitting headphones on.  Then the tester goes outside, and you soon hear her disembodied voice through the headphones, giving instructions.  The first series are words, and your job is repeat them back to the tester.  They come in left, right, or both, at a speaking tone or a whisper.  Sometimes there’s static in one ear and a word in the other.  And then there’s the point where the whisper is so quiet, you’re really not sure if you hear it, or just feel it, or it’s imaginary.   Think how foolish you look, repeating words that aren’t even there.  I try to make sure.

Then we switch to tones.  Some are high, some low, loud to soft, and sometimes, it becomes just an ethereal tinkling that might be a sound, or might be just your head messing with you.  When you hear it – say “yes”.  So it’s hours (or maybe ten minutes) of yes-yes-yes-pause-maybe-yes as the tones go back and forth, like a Jimi Hendrix solo in stereo.  

When I practice meditation (not so often recently, I just fall asleep), I focus on one “spot” in the center of my brain, and quiet every other thought.  So here I was, focused on the center of my brain where the tone was just at the faint edge of my hearing.  Enlightenment and Nirvana (the place, not the musical group) couldn’t have been far away, when a firm voice said – “THAT’S IT”.  

I’m Not Listening

My right ear is just fine.  My left ear is fine in the low to medium range.  Medium to high (the exact range of a nine year-old boy) it falls off, but not enough to require a hearing aid.  Why the left and not the right?  I’m left handed, and when I officiate track meets, I have the starting pistol with a .32 caliber black powder shell about three feet from my left ear.  I usually wear electronic hearing “muffs” that surpress the sound, but sometimes there’s no time to get them on.  A couple of years of fifty shots a night, a couple of times a week, and my left ear is getting it.  Not quite “shot” yet – but in definite need of protection.

He says I’ll have trouble hearing when the water’s running, or in a bar.  Well, I’ve been in trouble in bars before.

The doc says make sure the headgear’s on.  I will.

The Sunday Story Series

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.