The state of my state

I feel that we all need to get back up to speed here when it comes to state of my physical well-being (or lack of well-being, as the case may be). I am a 53 year old feller that has probably 150,000 bike miles on his odometer. If this were an ad for a used car, I would say that my engine has lost some horsepower and my chassis, while in good operating condition, has some parts that could be replaced or upgraded.

Half-assed

Like many people my age, I tend to not think of myself as being the age that I am. My development seems to have arrested itself at around age 22. Am I able to do things that a 22 year old can? No, absolutely not, Does that stop me from trying? Also no. I had a moment last summer of this age-awareness memory lapse when I was teaching my daughters to water ski. In a moment of water-soaked hubris, I thought that I would try to get up on one ski and slalom a bit (slalom water-skiing is when you use only one ski—it’s as pointless as it sounds). You see, as a younger person, I could ski on one ski, and being a dumber older person, I thought I still had those skills locked deep within me somewhere. Probably locked up somewhere next to my ability to remember movie dialogue or my ability to roll up the sleeves on my t-shirts.

I prepared myself behind the boat and gamely yelped, “Hit it!” I arose from the water as though two decades hadn’t passed, and then my left leg recalled its current age and tried to twist itself off my body at the hip. I hit the water like a newly christened tugboat and after bobbing to the surface; I assessed the damage. I could move my leg (a plus), it hurt (a negative), but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I downgraded my slalom experience to a jaunt on two skis. I jumped right up out of the water, did a lap to show my daughters that I was indeed, rad (they might have not been looking when I accomplished this feat), and let go of the tow rope. Virility accomplished.

Then I tried to get into the boat, there was hot pain coming from the base of my left buttock. I winced but didn’t make a sound, as I wanted to maintain my virility glow for a bit longer. As the day wore on, my butt sprain stayed with me, putting an old prospector-style “hitch in my giddy-up”. I wasn’t limping, but I wasn’t leaping about either. The next morning I made the executive decision to “walk this one off”, meaning I diagnosed myself with a sprain that didn’t need (professional) medical intervention. (As you get older, you tend to make these snap medical decisions, “Does it hurt?” “Yes.” “Can you still move it?” “Yes.” “OK, add it to the list and let’s carry on, who has time for physical therapy anyway?”)

I mention this scene of skiing sadness because it was six months ago, and I will still occasionally get butt twinges. They don’t affect my mobility or strength, but they twinge nonetheless, as once you hit 50, nothing heals, you just add it to the list.

Speaking of a list of malfunctions and maladies, over the past few years my esophagus has, on occasion, chosen to slam itself shut during the chewing process. (TRIGGER ALERT: regurgitating content ahead.) This has happened to me on no fewer than a dozen occasions, so I decided to bring the experts in on this one. (I do go to the doctor sometimes.) After an endoscopy, I found out that I have eosinophilic esophagitis (let’s just call it by it’s street name, EOE), which sounds very serious, but is mostly a food allergy in my case. EOE isn’t a food allergy that results in an emergency room visit (funny thing about your esophagus closing is that you can still breathe, you can’t even hold down saliva without regurgitating it, but breathing is good, so you wait it out), it’s more of a slow build up of crap in your craw until your esophagus says, “Enough, we’re shuttin’ this thing down.” and you immediately cough up whatever is in your throat. And trust me, it freaks your dinner companions out—like way out—to see you jutting your jaw out like a baby robin so you can burble up even the smallest bit of saliva or water.

Anyhoo, the funny thing about food allergies is that almost nobody knows much about food allergies. I went to the allergist and I had the prick test (turns out I’m positive—sorry couldn’t resist), and I was a little allergic to probably eggs and maybe nuts, but to be sure I would need to go on an elimination diet, which means you just stop eating stuff, and the stuff in my case was: wheat (not gluten—wheat—the whole damn grain), dairy, eggs, soy, nuts and shellfish. That left meats, oats, rice and maybe some soil on occasion. I think this was supposed to be eight weeks or so, and it was challenging eating only prescription food. I lost quite a lot of weight (bike racers love this sort of side effect, sad freaks that they are) despite slamming rice and oat foods, and I’m sure my wife was ready to cure my esophagus with a medical throat punch after trying to stay within the strictures of my dirt and meat diet. Oddly, she was the one who remembered my mom telling her that, as a child, I was allergic to corn. (Corn! I was born in Iowa and was allergic to corn! That’s like being from Jersey and being allergic to not pumping gas!) So I added corn to the list of things that I couldn’t have (corn is snuck into almost everything in the form of corn syrup, that stuff is everywhere), and it seemed to do the trick. So I only need to get rid of eggs, nuts and corn, and it only took about six months of eating twigs and animals I found about our property to find out.

So that’s it for the list of maladies (good God, we old people love to talk about this crap), but I’m sure there’s more on the way, because—as I’ve mentioned before—I’m an older fellow and things don’t end pretty for us.