Elder Issues

“REALLY, you guys should check it out, my heart doctor is excellent. He’s just a kid, like Richard here.  But he seems to know what he’s doing. I mean, he didn’t kill me or anything.  I can give you his phone number if you want.”

Yesterday, we were having lunch with my husband’s new business partner, a handsome 30-year-old CPA who is so cute he “makes some of our clients, blush.”  There we were, three senior citizens (my husband, Alan, his old college buddy and business partner of 40 years, Bob, and me) having lunch with a young whippersnapper (that’s old folk talk…in case you are under 30 yourself).

When you’re a senior citizen, everybody looks like a kid. One client asked Richard, “How old are you anyways?”

We were lunching at CoCo’s, one of the restaurants we frequent so often that the waitresses call us by name.

Anyhow, as often is the case when senior citizens outnumber youngsters at lunchtime, the conversation moved to illnesses, treatments, stomach issues and other medical stuff.  Bob, the oldest member of this lunch club, started telling us about a procedure he recently had:  a “catheter ablation for atrial fibrillation.”

“Sounds ghastly,” I blurted out, as Bob struggled with the proper medical pronunciation.

“Wasn’t that bad at all, really,” Bob began, as the waitress placed his iced tea with lemon in front of him.  “The heart doctor just runs a tube up through a vein in your groin, up to your heart.  Of course, you’re sedated … sort of.  You are in twilight sleep, but you can hear the doctors talking and joking around.” Continue reading “Elder Issues”