When did I get old?

So this morning we were at McDonald's (after all the trauma with the dog) and a nice young man, seeing his kids were dawdling at the drink fountain, urged them to hurry up because no doubt the old lady behind them needed to get a drink. He was talking about me. I've never heard anyone call me an old lady before. I know he meant well, but if I'd had a cane I might have whacked him on his shins. That was my first reaction - - which I realise is the reaction of an old lady. Sigh.

Twenty years, wow...

The following pictures are from when I started my job at the hospital vs. a few days ago. Twenty years gone by... The first is me at 30 (I started work right before my birthday), the second as I'm about to turn 50. At least it's been a good part of my life, the best, so far.

Me at 30

And now, at almost 50!

I'm sorry I haven't updated much lately

I'm still without Internet at home, although I can get on with my hotspot, and I've only used about a fifth of my allotment in three weeks. But a lot has been happening lately, and I've come home just too tired to blog. But I have a three-day weekend and I'm hoping to get some writing in. Also, for now, I'm over at my friends' house waiting for 'Grimm' to come on while they're taking a nap. Since this is my computer (I've let my friend borrow it, as his needs a new power supply), all my settings are on my login, so I just went ahead and switched users and am using his Internet to get online.

So several things have come to mind over the last few days, things I've meant to blog about, but haven't. Here's the most serious:

There comes a time when, if we are lucky to live long enough, our own ageing and eventual mortality raises its ugly head. Perhaps it is dealing with the impending or actual death of a parent, or of a close friend, or perhaps even a diagnosis that is going to mean our own death within what suddenly seems a short time.

I will be turning fifty next year, the milestone so many dread, and to which I normally reply, ‘Well, it’s better than the alternative.’ When I turn fifty, I’ll have been at my current job for twenty years, and (unless I find something else soon) will be laid off the very month that I have my birthday. I’m feeling like an old fogey, and for the first time, I’m really afraid of age discrimination in the job market, and that as a solo medical librarian, I have harmed my job prospects because I don’t have the supervisory experience expected in most jobs looking for the length of career that I do possess. This despite the fact that I learn quickly, am great with technology, am very good with interacting with other people from all walks of life and am very flexible in terms of jobs I can do and my willingness to step in and help the team work out an issue. In the past few years, I have taken on another job in revenue cycle that has had me working with clinicians I never had much contact with before. I’ve helped out during temporary absences with things like foot pressure studies and patient scheduling, learning new systems and skills. It’s shown that I can do just about anything I set my mind to. But in the end, it may not matter, as the hospital is moving to an ambulatory care centre model, and there simply is no room for a library, librarian, or even the bulk of my charge entry job, as we will not be able to charge for outpatient facility fees. So I’m in a sort of limbo, looking for another job, at nearly fifty, after devoting most of my adult life to my organisation.

But adding to the uncertainty are issues of my own health and that of people close to me. Will my own health, which is not great, but which is managed, hold out until retirement? Will I lose people I love before I’m ready to let go? Am I up to the challenge of being a caregiver beyond what I have done for years? Will there be anyone left to take care of me, given that I have no children and a very small network of loved ones? These are all questions on my mind. For right now, I don’t have answers. Time will have to provide them. But it is all very unsettling. For now, though, while it is on my mind, the focus must be in living, in being with those I may lose, in doing what I can to help my own health. It is all any of us can do when faced with the march of time. In the end, it is how we live our allotment that matters.

Much less serious:

It's amazing how much attention you can garner while eating a pomelo.

I'd seen pomelos at Kroger and I have never had one and was intrigued. Sure they look like giant grapefruit, but I wanted to know how they tasted. But at $3.99 each, I wasn't going to try. Then I saw one in a little bag for 99 cents in the bargain bin, and bought it and took it home. Yesterday I took it to work with me, and was immediately bombarded at the lunch table by 'what is that?' and 'is that a grapefruit?' But it didn't stop there. Two people called out the same questions from a table, and another came over and asked me, too. I cut it in half, and that one half filled me up. It was actually quite sweet, not the tangy bitter grapefruit taste at all. I asked the staff in the cafeteria to wrap up the other half for me, and they were all curious about it, too.

It was quite an experience.

Back to serious:

It annoys me that icons like Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright seem to think that female supporters of Bernie Sanders can't be proper feminists or are somehow betraying their own kind because they do not believe that they should vote for Hillary Clinton simply on the basis of her gender. While I would like to see a woman as president, it's not my only criterion. Instead, I vote according to whom I think will do the best job leading the country and who stands for the things I believe in. For me, that is Bernie Sanders. I'm not saying I would not vote for Clinton should she be the Democratic nominee. But I seriously dislike her. Not as much as Donald Trump, mind you. But unlike Bernie Sanders, she says things based on politics rather than being consistent about her beliefs and assertions. I am tired of Washington insiders. Yes, Bernie has been a senator for a long time, but he's not in the pocket of big money, he's a maverick, and he's consistently been one for a long time, too. The only thing he might be weak on is foreign policy, and I'm sure he's smart enough to surround himself with the best people for that. Can he get things past Congress? I don't know. But I'd like to see him try. Also, I have trouble with the e-mail thing with Clinton. Seriously? I can't use my personal e-mail for my work, and I'm in a non-profit with no real secrets. But seriously, as Secretary of State? Granted, others apparently did not use encrypted government e-mail, either, but you know, that's dumb on all their parts, or at least dumb on their staffers' parts. I know people of Clinton's generation are not necessarily as tech-savvy as your average 20-year-old these days, but really? It's just dumb. How are you supposed to have any idea of national security if you can't grok that?

Despite the fact that many feminists have given feminism a bad name over the years, I consider myself a feminist. I do not support Hillary Clinton, true. I'd like to see a woman in office, but I do not want to see her in office, necessarily. The nice Jewish man from Vermont, old as he is, socialist as he is, even with his unfortunate choice of democratic socialist as description (if you don't understand while that's unfortunate, try reading some European history), is my choice. I have a Sanders bumper sticker on my car--the first time I've ever put a political statement on one of my cars. I'll definitely be voting for him in the primary. And Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright and the rest of those indignant feminists who think I'm betraying women can kiss my ass, because I have a mind of my own and I don't care what they think.

When I was young

I was in quite some pain, mainly due to fibromyalgia, something that no one really ever understood and called my 'fibrous migraines' because back then I talked about it all the time. I pretty much shut up about it, but of course it's still there. The carpal tunnel was more numbness than pain, but limited me for years before I finally did get the surgery because my hands were drawing up at night and it was becoming painful. Ever since my twenties, I've had a litany of syndromes, most of which were not in my head, my reputation among my friends as a hypochondriac not withstanding.

But I tell you, as you get older, it gets worse.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather live each day like the gift from the Gods that it is. Every day, as one person told me, that you wake up on the right side of the grass is a great day. But I took a nap earlier and was awakened not by the alarm but from pain in my feet, hips, neck, and elbow. I think I'm getting tendonitis in the elbow again. I have bulging discs in the neck, osteoarthritis just about everywhere else, and neuropathy in my feet. I try not to complain much, and generally I just plough on through the pain. I'm good with chronic pain (although with acute pain, I'm a weenie). And the first thing I did when getting up (other than folding the blanket back up and straightening up the bed like a person trying to be neater in her life) was to take an Aleve and my medicine for my feet. So it should settle down soon, I hope.

That reminds me. I saw an old man who could barely walk earlier today, with one of those super-duper rolling walkers with a basket (the type I once saw two women comparing each other's on the bus as if they were muscle cars) and a bicycle helmet on his head. So he's obviously unsteady and tends to fall, and they want to make sure he doesn't hurt himself. Maybe's he had a stroke or something. Anyway, I was admiring his gumption as he rolled the walker a few yards, then stopped to make sure his balance was okay, then repeated several times. I was a little worried when a car came through a bank drive through pretty fast, that it might startle him and he'd fall. But no, he just kept going.

Then he turned the walker to the street and jaywalked with oncoming cars on Euclid Avenue, which is pretty busy on Saturdays and it was right by Kroger's with the traffic there. He got across okay, but my goodness, I believe there might have been some dementia there as well, or maybe just guts. I mean, most everyone in the university area does jaywalk, but come on? With a walker? And a helmet? Eek!

Oh, and regarding my post earlier about bikes, it restored my faith in bike riders to see two of them while I was at the same bus stop riding, obeying all traffic laws, and (gasp) signalling. That's the first time I've seen that in some time. Do they even teach kids hand signals anymore? Do kids get bicycle safety classes like when I was a kid? There I am, sounding old again.

I had a brief maternal flash today as well. There was a little girl, 20 months old, that was actually cute (I don't say that about just any child) running about. Her mom was keeping a pretty good eye on her, but she strayed a little close to the street every now and then. They came over to the bench and waited with me for the bus, and she chattered and mom played with her, even though she had a baby in a stroller as well. When the bus came, mom was obviously going to have to work with the stroller, which has to be folded up and under a seat on the bus, the baby, and her bags, and the little exuberant girl was jumping down off the bench as the bus approached and without thinking I put my hand out and she took it, and then I helped her up on the bus, giving mom a chance to take care of everything else. For all that I'm not particularly child-oriented (I kind of fear them, and don't know how to be good with kids, having never had practice) despite working in a children's hospital, I feel very protective of kids, and I think it's everybody's job to keep an eye out on them so they don't get hurt.

Anyway, there was something about that soft little hand in mine that for a moment, just for a moment, I regretted not having a child. Then it passed, and sanity returned. I would be such a neurotic parent, and would never be able to let them just be kids. It's really just as well. But she was darling, and I'm glad I did that.

Okay, I think the pain is easing (although I do feel like I need some sort of rack traction). It's time to start the notes. I want to try to get them finished before dark. :)

Excellent article about how ageing and dementia in prisons

The Vanishing Mind: Life, With Dementia

Dementia in prison is an underreported but fast-growing phenomenon, one that many prisons are desperately unprepared to handle. It is an unforeseen consequence of get-tough-on-crime policies — long sentences that have created a large population of aging prisoners. About 10 percent of the 1.6 million inmates in America’s prisons are serving life sentences; another 11 percent are serving over 20 years.

And more older people are being sent to prison. In 2010, 9,560 people 55 and older were sentenced, more than twice as many as in 1995. In that same period, inmates 55 and older almost quadrupled, to nearly 125,000, a Human Rights Watch report found.

While no one has counted cognitively impaired inmates, experts say that prisoners appear more prone to dementia than the general population because they often have more risk factors: limited education, hypertension, diabetes, smoking, depression, substance abuse, even head injuries from fights and other violence.

Many states consider over-50 prisoners elderly, saying they age up to 15 years faster.