Old People

I've started my second rotation, primary care, but it's actually in an urgent care. I don't mind that though. We aren't doing a lot of chronic disease management (ex: high blood pressure, diabetes, asthma) that you would see in primary care, but the environment is still very primary care 'esque.' All the staff know all the patients, because the patients continue coming back to them over and over and you can see those so very valuable provider-patient relationships you get working in primary care. I am enjoying it. I love that I actually have time to talk to people, they genuinely are so grateful for what we do for them, the staff are all friends (quickly discovered liking who you work with highly surpasses importance of where you work), and since it's a privately owned office, one of the doctors is able to bring his little dog with him, and who doesn't love that!?

So this post is about old people, and I mean OLD people. 90 and 100something year olds. We see a handful of them everyday, and I am intrigued and sometimes horrified by the sheer difference of actual 'age' people can be. For example, I saw two 75 year olds back to back. One of the 75 year olds was just as agile as I was, easily standing, sitting, laying down on the exam table, etc. Their mind was still young and lived by themselves, and only on one medication. The next 75 year old I saw was brought in by wheel chair, could barely sit forward so that I could listen to their lungs properly, in chronic pain, had a long long list of health issues and medications, and the poor thing had lived in an assisted living home for many years already. And the terrifying part of these two people is that they were both the same gender, same prior occupation, same number of kids, neither had ever smoked, both grew up and had lived in/around Roanoke their entire lives, both widowed recently, etc. They seemed to live fairly similar lives and yet they could not be on farther ends of the spectrum as far as health.

I like to think that Seth and I do a fairly ok job taking care of ourselves (aside from the atrocious amount of candy/sweets we eat (btw, I haven't had a candy bar in 3 days. This is a HUGE deal for me)). We both are fairly active. Post-half marathon, Seth has began lifting and I've started these 'T25' videos my sister lent me. We eat well. We try to make meals proportionally heavy in veggies, we do our best to buy organic meat, only eat whole grains, and really if we even need a fat source to cook we use olive oil. We really just drink water; Seth occasionally relapses as a recovering sodaholic but nothing crazy, and I'll have some tea a lot of mornings. Neither of use tobacco, once in a blue moon I'll have some wine and Seth will have a beer, and otherwise don't really have any bad habits. With that being said, I hope we become old people who are not old, but meeting people like the last two I described really makes you wonder. You can't do much to control your genetics. Seth and I both have a handful of healthy older people in our families and instances of longevity, but we both have a handful of really not healthy people in our families. So who knows. Hopefully our lifestyle choices now will help us out if we didn't win the genetic lottery.

Other examples of interesting older people I've met:

-A 90some year old woman who is wheel chair bound, hasn't walked in years and can't lay down (has to sleep sitting up in a chair), but totally mentally intact and in high spirits, unashamed of her disability bossing me around to help her move her leg here, lift this, pull that, etc., still puts on lipstick every day and curls her hair.

-An 88 year old woman who still works a few days a week as a cashier, because she gets bored. Oh, and she gardens, manages a bee hive, cans her own honey, hunts, and lives by herself.

-One of the most beautiful things I saw this week though was an older gentlemen (70s maybe) who brought his father in for a cold, who was in his 90s. I don't know why, but I just found it so moving to see this older gentlemen himself taking care of his even older dad. He was in really good health, really high energy and super cute with his exaggerated southern politeness. His dad had a little dementia, so he was fairly unresponsive to my questions as I was trying to obtain the appropriate information I needed to develop a diagnosis and treatment plan, but when his son talked to him he answered every question, and they conversed rather normally. How amazing would it be to be in good enough health ourselves to take care of our parents when we're that old, and our parents to really be in good enough health in their 90s that we could do it on our own!?

So anyways, I've learned age is just a number. You could be a very young 70 year old or a very old 70 year old. I also want to take a moment to make fun of Seth as I close, because Seth is a math genius. Literally. I'm not just saying that. Sometimes I think he has some sort of super power. However, last night as I was telling him about some of the older people I've seen, he said "Babe...we could live to see the year 3000." ....really? The year 3000? Modern medicine is pretty good, but not that good. As I looked at him quizzically, he followed up with "Ya! We would be 110!" Ooooooohhh my. Then I started laughing hysterically and as he realized his mistake, he didn't find it quite a cool to say we could live to see the year 2100. This guy understands incredibly complex calculus, really advanced probability, and physics, but sometimes messes up on basic addition. Maybe he doesn't have a super power after all. :)