At 81 years and 3 months: SUDDENLY, OLD!
I first noticed obvious signs of (seemingly) suddenly appearing bodily signs of aging (mostly deepening wrinkling on face and neck, plus when my face is in repose I look (but don’t feel) depressed: gravity draws down the face!) in 2022, and, even now think it was due to massively increased stress thanks to an extraordinarily difficult housemate that we (dear son — and my guardian — Colin and myself) finally had to get a court order for her to move out!
But then, 2023 really took its toll, as my years-long concern for son Colin’s health (overweight and — like his mother until age 40 — a smoker, plus had been enduring newly developed difficulties with knee, shoulder, back — all of which made physical exercise difficult) ramped up into dread over the summer. Sheer dread. I kept seeing him in my mind’s eye in a medical emergency, on a table with bleeping and frantic folks in white coats — and kept trying to stop stop STOP! that nightmare vision, saying to myself, “Just wish him Happy, Healed, Whole, Ann.”
Yes, in order to stave off the vision (the premonition, I know now), Happy, Healed, Whole became my mantra for him, daily, hour by hour. So when the call from my dear son Colin came, early in the morning on August 16, 2023, “Mom, would you please come over here right now?’ (meaning where he lives, next door), it was as if what I had long dreaded (and geared myself for) had finally come to pass. And along with horror, and immediate gear-up for the emergency, there was also a sense of relief. At last. It’s here.
(BTW: though still paralyzed from waist down, and with nerve pain that waxes and waves, Colin used his Catastrophe to both stop smoking and to lose weight — over 100 pounds at this point.)
So now, besides my ongoing tremor of over 20 years (thanks to daily taichi and chikung holding steady, rather than getting worse), and the recently broken left wrist (from which I can now temporarily remove the new brace and so am back to typing with both hands as of two days ago!), over the past three weeks I’ve been noticing that a spot on my back has been periodically itching. Over and over again, I’ve been noticing this part of my back calling for my conscious attention, while trying to both ignore it and use a back scratcher to reach it without seeing it.
And so finally, yesterday, I asked Marita if she would take a photo of this part of my back and show me. Which she did. Ye gods!
Off to IU Urgent Care, and an afternoon of waiting around before the resident NP told me I needed to see a dermatologist, which of course I knew, and, not having a primary doctor, had walked over to Urgent Care to get a referral and possibly a faster appointment. I’m now waiting to hear from the Optima Dermatology, and if they don’t call by early afternoon, I will call there.
Five hours later: IU Urgent Care had the wrong fax number, so had not referred me. So I just made an appointment, but can’t get in until 1 pm 3/19/24 . . .
I do have an extraordinary (and very expensive) ointment here, Curaderm, which unfortunately, is probably five years old, and I did not refrigerate it. Have ordered a new one, but did it through e-bay, for half-price, but now I see that it won’t arrive until some time in April!
Wait a minute! I’m going to use the one I have here, because it sure never did “get below 77°”. And since the appointment isn’t for five more days, I’m going to ask Marita to apply the Curaderm, twice daily. YES!
Maybe I’ll be able to cancel the appointment. Both of us have a sense that it’s going to turn out to be no big deal.
Oh, and over the past three weeks I’ve also developed what seems to be a weird mouth ulcer down deep in the crevasse between teeth and lower lip – so that when I brush my teeth, saliva is lightly bloody.
Oh yes, and I just remembered — three adjacent back teeth extracted only months ago! — after literally years of trying to deal with a chronic bacterial infection deep inside the gum around those teeth myself with oil pulls as much as three times daily.
Of course I’m concerned about all the ways my health, my assured well-being, seems to be degrading, and suspect that my own chronic stress from son Colin’s ongoing catastrophe is suddenly wearing down my body at much faster — and unexpected! — rate. However, I didn’t really notice the degradation much until the broken wrist slowed me to a crawl for the first three weeks, and even now, I feel more fragile and unstable than before, clutching railings to go up and down stairs, etc. In other words, OLD!
Searching for singular, linear “causes,” (when it might be wiser to think in terms of the Buddhist interdependent co-arising) I wonder if the mouth sore stems from the comfrey homeopathic for bone trauma that I’ve been taking, under the tongue three or four times a day. Those little pellets are coated with something sweet! So I’m now only doing the homeopathic once daily, and instead using the comfrey creme that dear Babette sent on the wrist. (Plus: I see that our own comfrey plants are starting to push leaves out of the ground, so soon will simply be able to make a poultice for the wrist out of the leaves. . .).
And, I wonder if the scratchiness of what has turned into a lesion on my back has to do with my body getting rid of the anesthesia I was given during the wrist surgery. I remember that area as being dried out, for decades, but not a bit puffy, like now. I know that skin is one of the ways the body gets rid of toxins. And my estimate of itchiness for three weeks jives with the date for the surgery.
Oh, and, this morning, rooting my way through a box of old herbal medicines, I came across the propolis tincture that my dear friend Ellen made back in Jackson Hole when we both lived there in yurts. That was over 20 years ago, but it’s still good. (I used actual propolis from a bee hive on my gums decade ago, so I know its effectiveness.) I swished a little in my mouth, and will do so again at some point today.
Amazing, how I’m now pretty much reduced to poring over and through the minutiae of my own bodily difficulties. But not really surprised, given the difficult transits to my natal chart, which are just beginning, and likely to last five years, through early 2028. (Transit of eruptive Uranus conjunct 23° Taurus Moon, first exact conjunction August 2023 with Colin’s Catastrophe; back and forth until August 2025, towards the end of this then spanning into conjunction with itself (2° Gemini) (FIRST AND ONLY 84-YEAR URANUS RETURN!) while exactly opposing Mars (2° Sagittarius), and finally, to top it off, conjunct Saturn (7° Gemini).
It appears that the Taurus eruption will segue from my body to this property over the next few years, as already we are making arrangements for new, and younger, people to partner with here in Green Acres Village.
On the other hand, I’m already back up to speed with daily 3-4 mile walks (though now more careful than carefree), and daily practices (yoga, chi kung, tai chi) in the back yard yurt, except for yoga poses done on my stomach where I would have to push down with that wrist.
I cannot imagine what it would be like for me now, if I did NOT have my daily two hours of physical culture, which, though I’m still not out of the woods, and in fact the woods may be getting deeper for awhile, I’m finding my own path through them, with dear 17-year-old puppy Shadow leading the way.
