I\u2019m off to see my doctor next Monday and have made a little list of things I want to discuss with him, hopefully to find out some causes and cures. As far as I know there\u2019s nothing serious and it\u2019s always a pleasure to see him \u2013 reassurance is one of his gifts. As I haven\u2019t bothered him for a while I shan\u2019t feel I am asking too much of the National Health Service, presently being drastically undermined by the criminally irresponsible ideas of our coalition government. <\/p>\n
I seem to be spending a lot of time at the moment amongst people with very major health difficulties, and several visits to see some of them in hospital or at home has emphasised to me the physical – sometimes mental -difficulties of ageing. The consequence of living longer is that our bodies generate problems. Longevity doesn\u2019t come without cost.<\/p>\n
The challenge is to know when to accept what\u2019s happening, and when to resist it. Sometimes there\u2019s no choice. I have just visited an elderly lady of 93. She lives alone, is looked after by her daughter and son who visit frequently, and accepting her limitations, lives in her own home positively and well. A recent visit to the audiology department of our local hospital left her exhausted \u2013 the noise and bustle and distance between places as she was wheeled from one place to the next. She was unable to sleep that night and the following day she was very weak. It didn\u2019t help that she was recovering from a virus. No room here for resistance, only acceptance.<\/p>\n
And yet she and so many others I know refuse to surrender to the self-pity and despair that can so easily accompany the infirmities and incapacities of old age. Dylan Thomas wrote his poem \u2018Do not go gentle into that Good Night\u2019 for his octogenarian father whose eye-sight and general health were failing. In the poem he urges his father to \u2018burn and rave at close of day\u2019, rather than giving into it. Shades here of the character in Shakespeare\u2019s Henry VI Part 1 with the line \u00abFight till the last gasp\u00bb .<\/p>\n
The good people that I know who undergo the limitations of age are unlikely to resist the latter days of life as dramatically as that! But they would understand the argument. \u2018Say \u2018yes\u2019 where you have to but \u2018no\u2019 where you can, would be their motto. <\/p>\n
And mine too I hope.<\/p>\n
Bryan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m off to see my doctor next Monday and have made a little list of things I want to discuss with him, hopefully to find out some causes and cures. As far as I know there\u2019s nothing serious and it\u2019s always a pleasure to see him \u2013 reassurance is one of his gifts. As I haven\u2019t bothered him for a while I shan\u2019t feel I am asking too much of the National Health Service, presently being drastically undermined by the criminally irresponsible ideas of our coalition government. I seem to be spending a lot of time at the moment amongst <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\n