I just started doing a bunch of really healthy stuff lately and you know what? I never felt better. Healthy living? Who knew?
But I had to. I mean at 58, the years stack up behind you faster than ever, so you may as live the ones in front of you as cleanly as possible.
Funny thing about the mind and body as we age. Just when you think you’re getting a handle on one, the other starts getting away from you. And if you’re around my age, you know exactly which is which.
Last spring I tore up my Achilles tendon running barefoot on a beach in St. Lucia, which inexplicably gets me very little sympathy from friends when I tell them that. I thought I was on the mend, wore a big ungainly boot for six weeks – which I might add gave me a screaming case of sciatica – but then was riding a bike when I thought I was all better, and POP! there went the Achilles.
Lucky for me, if you can possibly use the words ‘lucky’ and ‘ruptured Achilles’ in the same sentence, there was a mass of scar tissue in there holding the whole mess together, so I could hobble around until November when I had the surgery.
Enter the mind thing. I think as you get older, you gain a sense of self you didn’t have when you were younger, a security in being who you are and the hell with what anyone else thinks.
I really started feeling that way in the last several years, not that I ever really cared what people thought of me. It just started getting stronger and with that security, led me to do stuff like theater. Which is why I put off surgery, I had a play to do, so I delayed the operation.
It went well, very well, and six months later, I was playing hockey again, my sport of passion, and never felt better.
So then, naturally, something ELSE went wrong.
read the entire article in June/July South Coast Prime Times
