What condition my condition is in

 David Sherman

Peter says he doesn’t feel like himself. That’s probably because he’s not himself. He’s the new older version, pushing a shopping cart of pain around as well of memories of who he used to be. Most of us used to be someone else. Maybe several someone elses.

Aches, pains, “conditions” accumulate, our bodies Iike shopping carts, heavier to push every aisle. Except this ain’t Loblaw and no one is looking forward to checking out.

Peel away a few decades and I was throwing a ball against a wall, appeasing a golden retriever I didn’t particularly like. Came home, picked up a leg to climb on my bike to wheel to work, and my back gave out. My strings were cut. Fell to the floor, crawled to bed. Moving anything discharged bolts of pain. My spine had called time.

Later, I heroically made my way to the fridge, walking on glass, afraid my spine would bite me. I wanted orange juice. My back didn’t and I collapsed on the kitchen floor of the empty house. The tiles were cool on my face. A bit of an antidote to the pain. I rolled over and lay on my back, stared at the ceiling.

My wife was at work. What was she going to do anyway?

Beached in the kitchen. I laughed. It was absurd. Crippled in the kitchen. But I was maybe 40.

“This too shall pass,” as my mother used to say. I crawled back to my bed with a smile on my face. A funny story to tell.

Now, I wouldn’t laugh. I wouldn’t be sure it would pass. What if …? 

A letter from someone I hadn’t heard from in a long time:

“I’m at the age where pain doesn’t go away.” And she wasn’t talking just the physical. Her sister died. Her husband was sick. If life wasn’t exploding, it was smouldering. Smoke was threatening to overwhelm.

Wrote a guy I knew about a gig I had played before. He wrote back the same day. Usually, people don’t write back at all. He was apologetic but he had so much demand, especially from “emerging artists.” The message was clear. Emerging meant young. I was submerging. 

The word in the theatre world and in the world of books: older white males have had their day. Publisher of one of my plays, discussing cover art, dismisses using a shot of a cast member from the original production.

“I can’t put a middle-aged white guy on the cover.” Oh.

Grant apps give you extra points for colour, gender, sexual preference, racial minority, physical disabilities. 

White, older, straight males are so yesterday. No one wants to see, hear or read us. Our time is up.

Thirty-year-old sofa’s hard on our backs. New York Times piece says, “It may not be your furniture. It might be you.”

We buy new furniture. It reclines. It’s adjustable. Has lumbar support. The Times was right. Our backs still hurt.

We’ve spent our lives sitting at work. Work is done. So’s our spines. 

Played sports in high school. A lot of knee bends. Crunches. Push-ups. Thirty years later they’re saying all that industriousness ruined joints. But I wouldn’t go quietly. I learn to swim. Start lifting weights. Buy a bike before there are bike paths to avoid. Feels empowering. Shoulders burn, back burns, but “no pain, no gain.” 

It’s all good for a few decades and then knees, hips, back, neck, shoulders go on strike. I’m a poster boy for cortisone. Give me the needle. Every joint is inflamed. The itises -- arthr and burs – invade.

A headache calls and stays for four years. Pain has me squinting. Disappears when I put my head down. I make the rounds. Doctors, pain specialists, physio, osteo. Pills, needles, pushing and yanking. Pain gives them all the finger. Smoking weed and playing guitar kills the pain. Doctor says smoke. Other says you can’t play guitar all day. Can’t smoke all day, either. No, I don’t even like being high.

Go on vacation and leave computer home. Headache disappears. Magic. Started hunting and pecking at a keyboard when I was eight. Staring at the keyboard of a Royal. Sixty years later I’m still bent over a keyboard. Discs in neck are shot. 

All the visits to all the health care professionals and no one even asked what I do or how I do it. I’m not human. I’m a collection of symptoms to be treated. I write the pain specialist. Yes, he writes, bending over your computer – “pronating your neck” can definitely give you headaches.

Thanks.

I’ve dodged the diet of blood pressure/ cholesterol meds. I’m not prediabetic. The scripts for pain and inflammation multiply anyways, many to deal with the side effects of their companions. I carry a pill vial.

My vitals are great but the doctor says my age and gender mean I could drop dead anytime. Just the averages, she says. That’s life. Don’t worry. 

Something else not to worry about. Maybe as you approach more decades than there are days in a week, there’s no point in worrying about anything. What matters what condition my condition is in? That’s life.

The shopping cart of aches and conditions is getting unwieldy. Peter and I will keep pushing.

No hurry to check out.