It’s Ironic. And Surprising. And Scary.

I finished the edits to Friday’s issue on Thursday afternoon. If you read it, you will remember that the main bit was about aging – how my perspective on getting older has changed throughout my life. I said:

“In my 20s and 30s, I didn’t think of death at all. In my 40s and 50s, it felt like a lifetime away. In my 60s, it was a thought, but only an occasional one. But now I can see it just around the next bend.”

At 5:00 p.m., after emailing that essay to Judith, I had a Jiu Jitsu class with Vitor. I was feeling tired, but we wrestled vigorously. And so, by the end of the class an hour later, I was feeling good. Vitor and I sat on the mats talking about this and that, as we often do after a lesson. At one point in our conversation, I noticed that I was having trouble articulating my thoughts. It was difficult to produce a coherent sentence. This went on for maybe a minute. I felt slightly embarrassed. So, I decided it was time to go. I was halfway to my feet when I fell down. We were on a mat, so I wasn’t hurt. I went to stand up again. But, again, I fell down.

I rested for several minutes, attributing my little episode to temporary exhaustion. When I felt I could stand, I did so, successfully this time. As I approached the door to exit, I tried to say something self-denigrating to ease Vitor’s evident discomfort. But the words came out garbled.

Vitor asked me to wait. He went next door to my exercise facility and brought back John, my physical therapist. John gave me a few diagnostic tests. He said he thought I had experienced TIA, which I found out later was short for “transient ischemic attack.” TIA is basically a mini-stroke that doesn’t do any permanent damage. Still, John recommended that I go to the hospital to check it out.

By then, I could speak without a problem and I felt fine. But I agreed to let Vitor drive me home. While Vitor drove me home, John called K and filled her in on what had happened. Seconds after I got out of Vitor’s car, I was in K’s car heading to Boca Raton Regional Hospital.

K dropped me off, and I walked into the emergency room. “It’s probably nothing,” I told the receptionist. “But my friend thinks I just had a TIA.”

She got on the phone, and seconds later a young man was interviewing me. I was amused and flattered. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been in an emergency room with a broken this or snapped that, in great pain, waiting hours to have someone take a look at me.

Minutes after my interview with the young man, I was speaking to a doctor. And then another one. By the time K returned from parking the car, less than 15 minutes later, they were admitting me to the neurology wing of the hospital (which, I learned later, has a very good reputation).

I got a CAT scan that night and an ultrasound on my neck the next morning. They told me I needed more tests, so I spent all of Friday getting one test after another. It wasn’t until Saturday afternoon, after the MRI of my brain had been analyzed, that K and I learned it wasn’t a TIA. It was a stroke. Actually, two strokes.

I was aware of the irony of my Friday essay. But I was also surprised. No, shocked. For someone my age – even for someone half my age – I’m in very good shape. I’m strong. I’m flexible. I have good lung power. Stamina. I mean, I compete in grappling with guys half my age. My personal MD had reminded me that my general cholesterol rates were somewhat high. And he’d suggested that I take statin drugs. But I declined. I didn’t need anything, I told myself, except to keep training like a 30-year-old.

Alas, my thinking was flawed. Being in outside shape – and even in inside shape with respect to the usual metrics (blood pressure, blood sugar, heart capacity, lung capacity, etc.) – does not mean your organs and circulation system are in equally good shape.

In my case, the problem was in the left carotid artery. It was 80% to 90% occluded. “But look at me,” I said to the chief neurologist. “I’m fine.” “Yes, you look fine,” she said. “But the ultrasound images look scary.”

“Scary?” Did she have to say “scary”? Couldn’t she have said “not so fine”?

So, I did what any intelligent person would do. I conducted my own scientific research on the World Wide Web. And I managed to come up with enough data and authoritative statements to be convinced that if I lived past the weekend, I’d be lucky to live another three or four years.

This put a damper on the rest of that day and the next. The shadow of death I had alluded to in my Friday essay was now directly in front of me. As the bard said, my “native hue of resolution” was “sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”

I got no work done on Friday, but managed to get bits and pieces of mindless emails answered on Saturday. And by Saturday afternoon, I was ready to start something more challenging. I started with writing this.

Tomorrow morning (Monday), if all goes well, I will meet with the surgical team that will tell me whether they are going to shove a stent through my groin and up through my heart and into the carotid artery. Or whether they will slice open my neck, open the artery, clean out the plaque, and sew me up. (I’ve done some research on that. Given that the extension of the carotid artery, which is in the head and attached to the brain, is apparently also heavily occluded, I think they’re going to do the cutting surgery, which is fine with me.)

You will be getting this issue, as usual, on Tuesday. If I’ve had the procedure and it was successful, I’m sure I’ll be back to my usual level of resolution. I’ll be pontificating about how to live a better, richer, more productive life, and I’ll be asking you to take my advice.

But what I hope I’m going to be doing is something very different. I am hoping that I will look at this event as just about every person I’ve spoken to has advised me to do. As a lucky break. A second chance.

And they are right.

Of course, they are right! We all know that there are things in life more important than wealth and accomplishment. There’s love. Kindness. Caring. Relationships.

We know all that. And we know that if were smart – like wise-smart – we’d live each day like we truly understood this most fundamental truth.

So, that’s what I’m thinking about tonight. What would I do if I really wanted to live each of my next days with the highest quality of experience I can ask of life? It’s not such a difficult question. The answers, when you are in the state I’m in, come pretty quickly and clearly.

I know what they are. The question: Do I have the resolve to stick with my plans? I felt terrible on Thursday and Friday. I’m feeling good enough to do some work (this work, for example) today. And as I feel better, I notice that the pale cast of thought is getting paler and paler. The resolution seems to be seeping back.

If I actually do what I think I want to do, what I should do in this last, exponentially shortening stage of my life, this may be the last blog post you ever receive from me.

But… check your inbox on Friday. I may have something there, an update, waiting for you.

Feeling My Age… Finally!

I’ll be in Myrtle Beach for a week in October, a yearly get-together with some life-long friends, playing golf, watching football, talking shit, and reminiscing. We’ll rehash old stories about the halcyon days of high school. And there may be some private conversations about the harrowing days in Vietnam. There will be proud accounts of our progeny, ruminations about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket. And there will be lots of self-deprecating remarks about how our golf games, and all the other activities we engage in, are degenerating due to our age.

I was thinking about that aging issue. And it occurred to me that during each decade of my life, I’ve had a different perspective.

Seven Decades; Seven Relationships With Time 

During my first decade of life, becoming older was an unquestioned good. Something looked forward to with unbridled anticipation. Becoming six would be better than being five. As being eight would be better than being seven. The value of becoming older in that first decade was such an obvious improvement in life that I measured my age in half-years.

Becoming older was equally desirable in my second decade. Each birthday made me in so many ways better off than I had been in previous years. My allowance went up. My responsibilities increased. And what modest liberties my parents gave me expanded. At 17, I enjoyed the height of social status in high school as a senior. The only thing I resented was that I had to wait until October of my freshman year in college to get a legal ID.

In my 20s, the eagerness I had always felt to become older faded. It was gradual. I don’t think I even noticed the change. But looking back at that time now, I can understand what happened. In my 20s, I was at the peak of my physical and mental fitness. I was strong, smart, and quick. I was also learning at the speed of light. I felt like there was nothing I couldn’t do. And that I would never die. I didn’t want to be older because I didn’t need to be older. Becoming 30 would give me nothing that I didn’t have already. I was a 20-something young man, at peak power and confidence, living the dream. The world was my oyster.

As I approached 30, however, I rued the fact that I’d soon be passing out of my 20s. Being 30 wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t peak performance time either. I wasn’t quite as quick in my reflexes as I had been. I remember distinctly the moment when I failed to execute my go-to ball-stealing move in basketball. My mind said “Go.” And my legs said “No!” I began to look for other physical signals that I was “getting old.” And I made a commitment to resist them by incorporating strength and cardio conditioning into my everyday life. I did that. And it helped. The quickness I once had was gone for good. But I was able to maintain my strength and flexibility and stamina.

Turning 40 was another milestone in my relationship with aging. In terms of physical strength, I still had a sufficiency. But my speed and stamina were now waning, along with the quickness. My brain was still firing on all pistons. If anything, I was thinking better than ever. But I could no longer hope to compete physically with younger people. To compensate for the deflating effect this had on my ego, whenever a younger person would outperform me in a physical activity, I would remind him or her that I was “an old man.” And if I happened to win, I could not refrain from reminding my opponent that they had just had their ass kicked by a 40-year-old!

In the decade from 50 to 60, my body continued its slow but steady degradation in terms of quickness, speed, and stamina. But for the first time, I was also losing strength. This was, of course, predictable. (There are competitive weightlifters and even fighters in their 40s, but none in their 50s.) But the loss of strength was difficult to accept. Not because I needed the strength in my daily life, but because it foretold the loss of other capacities.

From 60 to 70, I could, for the first time, refer to myself un-ironically as an old man. I had lost any hope of keeping up with the strength, stamina, agility, or speed of younger people. In Jiu Jitsu, I could win matches against younger opponents, but only if I were technically more advanced than they were. In overall physical terms – i.e., horsepower and athleticism – the kids were miles ahead of me. This I knew I had to accept. And I adjusted to it. At the same time, I had to face another side of aging – the gradual disintegration of my skeleton and heart and lungs all my other vital organs. I have been lucky with that so far. But I was surrounded by friends that were dealing with all kinds of medical problems. That cast a shadow.

And now here I am, almost 72 and very much aware that in eight years I will turn 80. I will continue to dig my heels into the downward slope of my aging, but for the first time ever, I feel like I’m not a younger version of someone my age. I’ll continue to fight the noble fight as hard as I can, but I am also accepting that I will be encountering new physical and mental degradations. And while I’m doing that, I will be seeing something that so far has been out of my range of vision. I’m talking about the specter of death, standing somewhere behind that next milestone at 80.

In my 20s and 30s, I didn’t think of death at all. In my 40s and 50s, it felt like a lifetime away. In my 60s, it was a thought, but only an occasional one. But now I can see it just around the next bend.

The average life expectancy for healthy 70-year-old men in wealthy countries, the data people tell us, is somewhere in the range of 80 to 85. That means I could be in the ground in as little as a decade. And that thought is in the back of almost every decision I make.