Forget the perks like discount movie prices and the senior metro card. We’re talking about post-80, when- every day-the paper sags open to the obituary page to tell you of another friend you’ve lost, to say nothing of your increasing collection of tiresome physical woes that make you feel like a used car with 250,000 miles on it.
Here’s the thing. What was I to make of it when the only medico willing to give practical advice on what to do about a torn calf muscle was a shrink?
The back story: I KNOW I have nerve pain from spinal stenosis. Cortisone shots helped somewhat. So, welcome to My Organ Recital, the story of one senior (me) negotiating the not always friendly mega-maze of modern medicine. BTW, Organ Recital is my name for a recital of physical ills.
This starts as a tale of irony, that in the end, a psychiatrist was the only one of a whole new wardrobe of doctors who was willing to offer advice on how to ease the pain of a purely physical problem.
Here’s how it started. I had a terrible pain in my leg that felt like a shin splint, and as if someone had hit the outside of my leg with a really hot branding iron. The physiatrist (new category, arose from sports medicine), known from now on as “Ole Blue Eyes” was treating a wholly different problem when this new monster surfaced. Ole Blue managed to leave me a breezy voicemail at 8pm on Thursday night, (two days after the MRI) confirming what I had said all along, it was a torn muscle. He didn’t say what I should do about it.
The irony of the psychiatrist is that my new primary care doctor made me see him because she didn’t want to prescribe sleep medicine.
Stay “tuned” for the next episode in the Organ Recital series.
Senior Warrior 