Aging

I can start a whole rant on You know you're old when...but I won't because it has been done to death. There does come a day when life smacks you in the back of the head so hard it slips discs numbered 4-5-6 causing you hot white pain behind your shoulder blade so fierce you swear you can taste bile. My last smack came while coughing for three weeks with a stubborn case of bronchitis. It was a "Ok are you kidding me" kind of cough. Christmas shopping, cleaning, wrapping, cookie making and decorating, unwrapping, cleaning, happy new year...cough, cough, cough. The doctor said to be patient. Let the new, better, stronger, stomach clenching antibiotics work. Finally I was given some wonderful cough pills to quell the cough but too late for the complete use of my left arm. The ache in my shoulder turned to pain, muscle spasms and heat in my shoulder. I began the ice-heat-ice-heat-motrin/vicodin mantra. Now I will begin the wonderful journey of traction and physical therapy. This will be my fourth round in ten years. It will not frighten me so much this time when they strap my neck into the machine that slowly pulls my skull back and up and then by inches brings it back down. I may not flail and get claustrophobic knowing my head is attached to a machine attached to a bed that if set wrong could pull it off! Hopefully this round won't last long and won't end in cortisone injections. I will make deals of course that if it gets better I will eat more fruit and less chips, I will lose weight and build up the muscles in my back and shoulders to support my spine. I will do better so I can be better.
And I. will. not. cough.