Don’t know much about geography. Don’t know much trigonometry. Don’t know much about algebra. Don’t know what a slide rule is for, but I do know that one and one is two. And if this one could be with you, what a wonderful world this would be.
Maintaining your health is key to independence
Posted by: Susan Marshall | Posted in: Cross Generational Experiences, Living Intentionally, Personal resources, Social/political Activism, Susan's MusingsMonday, March 24, 2008
Capture the moment, carry the day. Stay with the chase as long as you may. Follow the dreamer, the fool, and the sage back to the days of the innocent age.
Stay with the chase as long as you can.
A few weeks ago I wrote a blog about the dimension of time. Then, quite recently, a reader wrote in, quoting Seneca: “we should live each day as a separate life.”
Now, I must confess that when Bryan Chong first submitted his comment, I first thought Seneca was his significant other. But within a goosec (the time required to do a Google search) I discovered that Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and later an advisor to the emperor Nero.
Bryan went on to say that Seneca’s sentiment gave him “a new perception of time and life”…and even a new energy. I love it!! To wake up each morning and choose to live this life, your life, as you decide it will be—independent of what has gone before you…or will come in the future. It’s so very Zen.
Certainly the lane changers we interviewed demonstrated their capacity to create life anew each day—or at least once in their lifetime. Unfortunately a large number of people struggle each and every day.
Maybe they struggle due to chronic illnesses—dictated by their genes or the result of a chosen lifestyle. They certainly aren’t the enlightened 80-year olds I see cross country skiing in the State Parks who have exercised and explored their whole lives; they might be the ranchers who didn’t have time to do anything but work, or the 98-year old I sit with regularly who is just old, or my husband’s mother, who has led a sedentary life.
These folks may want to live a “separate life” each day as Seneca advised, but they are challenged by the lives they’ve lived to date. What to do for them? More personally, what to do for yourself to ensure you can choose how to live as you age?
I sit on the board of the Visiting Nurses Association of Northwest Colorado. Earlier this month, I met with staff from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They were in town to assess our fledgling Aging Well program, whose goal is to enable older citizens to conduct their lives with maximum health, independence, dignity, and connection to community.
Who are these “older citizens?” All of our Aging Well materials proclaim they are “50 and better”—the same target market as AARP. I don’t know about you, but when I got my inaugural issue of AARP, I was angry—no, I was pissed!! “What are they thinking? I’m not old!!”
But some people are old—if not at 50, then at 60 or 65. Just because we baby boomers have grown up with health in mind doesn’t mean that the generation before us did. And while we are staying active—exercising and exploring new activities—we also are studying with keen awareness our own parents aging process, aren’t we?
Like me, I’m sure many of you have had to drop everything to take care of a parent who’s fallen in ill health. Many recover from that acute episode (as my mother thankfully did), but some live through that event knowing that it is the beginning of a long decline in their parent’s ability to live alone.
But I digress. Back to my meeting with the foundation and our local Aging Well program. The RWJ Foundation provides grants for projects that advance their mission to improve the health and health care of all Americans. One way of doing that is to fund programs that use evidence-based methods to reach and improve the lives of underserved portions of our population. Well, the VNA here in Northwest Colorado does just that—and the Aging Well program is a central component.
Through that program, VNA tries to reduce social isolation through a series of community-based programs and services. Nearby, in Craig, we have Wellness Wednesdays, a full day devoted to various exercise programs (including swimming), writing lessons, art classes, and just plain socializing. When I stopped by, there were probably 30 seniors there, many of whom say that Wednesday is their very favorite day.
Throughout the two counties where we focus our service, Aging Well offers many opportunities for elders to get healthy and age healthily. They do this by, in some cases, by partnering with private enterprise. Examples include N’Balance exercise classes, Yoga for 50 and Better, classes at the local junior college that are tailored to learning adults, senior bowling leagues, and Senior Swimnastics.
But they also make use of public funding and private grants to conduct free “Tai Chi/arthritis exercise” classes in churches and community centers. This is but one instance of how the VNA tries to help people manage ongoing chronic conditions. The key is to educate folks on what can be done and to make as many opportunities to them available as possible.
So far, I’ve talked about the activities that reduce social isolation, make the public aware, and educate our target market about what they can do to get and stay healthy. Our Aging Well program, however, has a sexy side (well, to a geek maybe!)—improving access to care by emphasizing technology integration and telehealth monitoring devices. Case in point, we are moving monitoring equipment into some seniors’ homes so that we can measure their critical health factors without driving to their home or asking them to come to us.
By the way, have I mentioned that our population density averages little more than 5 people per square mile? The issue of access to care is a critical one in this rural corner of Colorado (or in Iowa or North Dakota). If someone is older and shut in due to infirmity, illness, or lack of nearby family, he or she can’t call a taxi. There are no bus lines. It makes the use of technology vital.
The VNA is also alert to other barriers to care, such as the inability to pay, the lack of insurance, and even cultural differences given the Hispanic base and growing number of immigrants our mining, ranching, and tourism industries draw. I didn’t know much about the healthcare challenges of a rural community when I signed up for this gig, but I’m glad to be even a small part of this outstanding organization.
But what’s the real bottom line here? You do want to stay in the chase as long as you can, don’t you?
For me, I have lots of incredible role models: Jack, the 78 year old man who we play bridge with when he’s not out on the tennis court; Don, 75, who proudly announces that his response to golfers who exclaim “you sure hit the ball well for an old guy” is “it’s my soft groins!”
He doesn’t share with them that his groin “condition” is the result of twice-a-week yoga led, no less, by his 70 year old wife. Happily, she’s also my yoga guru! Libbie smoothly plies herself into backbends, effortlessly demonstrates handstands, and stays in impossible one-legged poses for what seems like hours.
Me? I still can’t push up into a backbend, but I’m thinking…..I will wake up one morning when I’m 60 and choose to live a life that day that includes a backbend!
