d-l-r-o-w.

Sometimes it’s only for a season.
-my dear friend John Koehn V

I can’t believe the words as I am typing them, “I almost passed out at a cardio-kick boxing class.” I don’t really know what makes me feel older – the fact that have resorted to community centre aerobics classes for physical fitness, or that my physical capabilities for whatever reason were lacking enough that I became light headed in a class where 80% of the other participants were obvious non-athletes. Please don’t get me wrong – that class was intense – it is listed on the website as “challenging” and I was getting my sweat on enough that I will surely be free-falling to the toilet for the next week at least (again with the old thing) – but seriously, pre-syncopal? C’mon Courtney.

Now, I know that I am not getting old, but I am clearly getting older – and I don’t know that I am alright with it. I would like to think that I will be satisfied with my current age, and everything it brings, for the rest of my life – I would – but my experience is that I have enjoyed each stage of my life so much that I don’t want to leave it for the next. As an older child I remember appreciating the book I Like to Be Little by Charlotte Zolotow so much it was as though the little girl in the book was speaking my thoughts.

“If I see something pretty I can draw it with crayons. Grown-ups don’t draw with crayons,” said that little girl.
“Usually not,” said the mother.
“I like to draw with crayons,” said the little girl.” That’s why I like to be little.”

I was never anxious to leave high school, for university, but when I got there I loved it, and I met new people, and I loved them too. Same with leaving SFU for medical school, and with graduation quickly approaching, I worry that I will miss all the people I have come to know and love very much in this (last) degree. I know that I have probably another 3-5 years of a transient lifestyle, and I guess I am really looking forward to eventually settling down into a community for some time.

Back to getting old. The theme of my reflections these days is just that. I am doing a Geriatric Medicine elective, and finding the work equally engaging and heart breaking. On my first morning I was introduced to a doctor who long-windedly explained to me his theories about why our species has old people. Why do we reproduce in our twenties and thirties, but some of us live to our eighties? Why don’t we just spawn and die like salmon or insects? “Because society needs our stories”, he said, “and when you are working with older patients, you have to always allow them to tell their stories, and remember they need to be heard.” I have kept this doctor’s advice at the forefront of my mind in the last week, and have found it very helpful. When a patient tells the 10 minute version of when they were born, instead of the year – I listen to their story. I’m learning a lot.

It is what has been both warming my heart, and breaking it. Most of the patients I have seen are having a hard time remembering the words they need, or their train of thought to be able to tell their story. But they are still surviving.