Health Archives - The Aging Artist

Upheaval

Am I Well?

I am experiencing an unexpected health scare.

A month ago I checked my blood pressure. It was high. My doctor recommended blood tests, and one was abnormally high. A specialist who did more tests flagged a possible serious condition.

Life’s Illusions

Now I am undergoing more tests with large machines probing my innermost parts. I face another month waiting for results. So much is uncertain.

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you”. Not true- it’s a foolish idea. Ignorance is no longer bliss.

Facing My Fears

Life is no longer normal. I have abruptly fallen off my path. I feel turmoil. Could the tests show I am healthy? I am clinging to hope. I want to be optimistic, but I am unable to override my worst fears. How bad can it be?

Falling off the path

Life is a mess. My plans and my routines no longer seen meaningful. How can I carry out a normal day? I don’t feel the desire to be creative. Will I recover? Will my creativity return? My thoughts are as chaotic as my paint palette. Can I accept an uncertain future?

Reflection and Gratitude

What can I do with all this turmoil ? If I step back from panic and take a meditative outlook, I may find perspective.

The truth is that something might be wrong within me. I am unaware of what that is. The machines will discover the truth. I will have to face that reality and adjust my life. This may be hard to do. Once I accept what is true, the path to recovery can begin.

I am grateful to have a companion who is willing to share this journey. That I am not facing this alone brings great comfort. I so appreciate her acts of care and love.

Aging and health concerns are universal. Friends and relations have shared their difficult health experiences. They offer reassurance that remediation is likely and effective.

Dependency

Life depends on a deep inner world and an complex outer world.

My conscious mind is just a small part of my being. While I might control my thoughts and emotions, I have no direct control of the billions of cells that form my body and make me a living entity. How my organs synchronize to provide energy and health are beyond my comprehension. I have to trust in mysterious life forces to keep me alive and sentient.

I depend on the society and infrastructure around me. The synchronicity of these systems operate for my benefit. I am grateful to live when science and medicine can understand and cure life-threatening diseases and disorders. I am grateful for the competent medical professionals that heal the sick and ailing. I am grateful to live in a country where medical care is a universal service.

Embrace the Unknown

Can life go back to be the way it was before?

If anything, this is a wake up call. Life is precious. Life is finite. There are no guarantees. Today is valuable.

Don’t wait for tomorrow to be happy. Laugh and love this moment. Enjoy what I have right now.

I need to embrace the uncertainty of life. Like a painting in process- life has has so much that is undecided and messy, There are unfinished areas and incompletions. There are more hopes than solutions.

If all the answers are known, painting would be dione, and the story would end.

The way a painting begins is often not the way it ends.

There is so much life still ahead. My story continues and evolves. I need to keep doing the things I care about. My quest continues.

“… And so keep alive the incentive to push further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves. Whither that I don’t know. That I don’t ask to know.“
Dag Hammarkjold

COVID19

Life Changing Encounter

I had an unpleasant surprise last week. I caught COVID!

In hindsight I shouldn’t have gone to the gym with a scratchy throat. I felt body aches and chills a few hours after my workout. When a fever developed, I went to bed early. Advil reduced the pain through the night. By morning I was really sick, and I tested positive for COVID!

COVID Fear

My deep fear COVID had been building from the beginning of the pandemic three years ago. Despite precautions I had now succumbed.

I tried to keep my mind from worst case scenarios but questions kept coming. Is this the end of good health? Will my life be changed forever by this contagion?

Fighting COVID

I was hopeful that my four vaccine shots would minimize my reaction to the virus. Government medical advice forn recovering from COVID depended on the severity of the symptoms.

I really felt awful: I had a fever, a raw sore throat, a nagging cough, aching muscles and extreme tiredness. I was also delusional: my mind was fixated on solving my unwellness as a complex puzzle. This delusion lasted two days and subsided when the fever and other symptoms diminished.

Recovery and Gratitude

Lots of rest was the cure. I had to surrender to the biological processes within my body to rescue me from COVID My ego and controlling willfulness were of little value in this fight. A loving and attentive spouse also helped my recovery.

I am relieved! As I write this, more than a week after COVID began, I am recovering well. Recent COVID tests were negative. Although tiredness and a dry cough linger, I retained my sense of smell, and I can breathe freely.

COVID Hindsight

Looking back at the past three years, it is hard to comprehend the toll that COVID has had on the economy and society the world over. Almost every family and individual has been affected in some way.

I am grateful for the innumerable efforts of clinicians, researchers, politicians and front line workers who have done so much to understand COVID and to minimize its impact.

Learning from COVID

Could society, government and individuals have handled this pandemic any differently than they did? There are so many opinions, attitudes and judgements on the source, cause, spread, prevention and cure for COVID. The impact and consequences of COVID have jolted humankind out of complacency.

COVID was a new danger that humankind had never faced. Although it was similar to other ravages in the past, its potential to devastate civilization provided critical moral and ethical dilemmas to everyone.

Lifeboats and Survival

Solving COVID is very similar to the ‘lifeboat’ question in ethics. Suppose you are lost at sea in a lifeboat with 50 people. If the boat can only sustain half that number, what is the solution to survival?

Who survives susch harrowing conditions?

Raft of the Medusa, Artist: Theodore Gericault

Some libertarians might say it’s the fittest that should survive and everyone should look out for themselves. Others may save the women and children; others would say ‘everyone or no one’. Some would refuse to decide and let circumstances dictate. Some would just give up and slip overboard. Others would defer to an autocratic leader to make all decisions. All of the choices are terrible and horrific for half of the people.

There is no right answer to the lifeboat dilemma. Some choices are better than others. If survival were based on killing the weaker ones, what mean-spirited selfish society would await the survivors?

After COVID

Similarly, what kind of society do we want to have after COVID is overcome? We often think that the only answer is the one we ourselves believe in. We want our plan! We want to exterminate other options.

For society to flourish we need to allow for differing views. We need a mixture of choices and attitudes to be heard. We need to heed the welfare of the vulnerable and powerless. We need to be responsible for the survival of as many people as possible.

To revisit the COVID history for lessons learned, we need to be cautious. People were making the best choices they could under difficult circumstances. I am glad that I was not required to make the hard choices for quarantines, masking and vaccination rule.

While I desire freedom to live as I want, there will always be limits to that freedom and responsibilities to ensure the health and safety of other citizens. That is what civilized societies do.

Resolving Old Habits

Changing How I Live

It’s 2024 and time for new resolutions. What needs to change?

As I work on this post, I am eating breakfast while I check my phone for emails. Music is playing, as I stretch my sore knee and type another sentence. The day is rushing by as my mind jumps from thought to thought. I won’t feel happy until this post is published. This busyness has a familiar pattern.

Business and Busyness

I have worked hard all my life. When I retired from my science career, I became a full-time art student. After my BFA, I began a career in art.

For a decade I immersed myself in the art business. I built a portfolio, developed a niche, and made lots and lots of paintings. I networked, marketed and sold my art. It was (and is) stressfully satisfying. I have always been busy.

Creating Time

Over the decades I prioritized efficiency and speed to create more time for productivity.

I multitasked everything I could. I planned breakfast when I showered, evaluated traffic when I ate and theorized science as I commuted.

I juggled 3 or 4 activities simultaneously. I would read a book, listen to music, look after the baby, and do yoga.

Multitasking was a carrot for saving time and completing my ‘to do’ list.

I rushed through everything I could. No time to waste! Why walk when you could run? I learned to speed read and paint fast. I crammed my day with frenetic activity.

I set goals, some small, some large, some unattainable. My happiness depended on these markers of success. I delayed any gratification to only the highest outcomes. Pain was part of the gain. Happiness depended on success.

Rushing Roulette

While I was highly productive in reaching goals. I had a problem: my mind was always somewhere else and one step ahead. The destination was my top priority and much was lost in this preoccupation.

The future was my focus, and the present always seemed a distraction and not a place to linger. I regret the moments I never savoured. I didn’t stop to hear my son’s laugh or enjoy my dog’s playfulness. I had been gambling the present for some unreachable future. I still am gambling away the present.

If happiness was the destination, the satisfaction was short lived. As quickly as one goal was attained, new ones were set. The train headed for a new destination before I could appreciate where I was. I was always on my way to somewhere else.

Limited

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains of the nation.
Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air go fifteen all-steel coaches
holding a thousand people.
(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men and women laughing in the
diners and sleepers shall pass into ashes.)
I ask a man in the smoker where he going and he answers: “Omaha.”
Carl Sandburg

Getting Off the Train

I realize I have been on the express train to Omaha most of my adult life. I don’t want to take that train anymore. I look out the window and see life flashing past as a blur as I wait for Omaha to come into view. Then what?

Something big is missing. Satisfaction or contentment? It’s time I resolve to change how I live.

“… To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we’re gliding down the highway
When in fact we’re slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away”

Paul Simon- Slip Sliden Away

Resolving to Change

I have made my happiness and satisfaction depend on future destinations. Getting off the express train doesn’t mean my journey is over. I need to change my concept of living. I no longer need to be so efficient or accomplished. I want to find a slower heartfelt trail- where I can smell the honeysuckle.

I want unstructured time. I want curiosity without regard to commercial sales. I want to paint portraits, carve wood, and make coloured glass bottles. I want to mess around.

I need to change my lifelong habits of rushing and multi-tasking my life.

Can I make the present more important than the future? Is it the journey itself that counts?

I have been telling myself “I will be happy when I get there’.

Maybe I need to say ‘I can be happy while I am getting there.”

I need to find out.

I am being driven forward into an unknown land.
The pass grows steeper and the air colder and sharper.
A wind from my unknown goal stirs the strings of expectation.
Still the question- Shall I ever get there?
There, where life resounds,
A clear pure note
In the silence

Dag Hammarskjold

Gratitude from Calamity

Life changes quickly. My Summer indolence was transforming into Autumn productivity when two developments changed everything.

An itchy throat became a bad cold. I had body aches, congestion and sleepless nights. I lost my appetite and could not concentrate. I cancelled an artist retreat to the Bay of Fundy. I just wanted to hibernate until I was healthy again.

attrinuted to Vincent Van Gogh “The saddness will last forever”(https://i.redd.it/jcivoov7zf781.jpg)

Hurricane Fiona struck the Maritimes September 24. Falling trees in our neighbourhood knocked out electricity for five days. A wood stove provided heat. We ate the contents of our refrigerator before things rotted. A radio provided news and batteries provided light.

The Sublime Force of Nature
Joseph Mallord William Turner
Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth, 1842
(https://media.tate.org.uk/art/images/research/1588_9.jpg)

The two events created similar effects on my psyche. My cold was a personal disruption. The illness squashed my spirits and enthusiam. I lost my gumption to tackle daily activities. I berated myself for not taking precautions. I felt despair and hopelessness. I gave up.

Although all of the Maritimes was affected by Hurricane Fiona, I felt personally victimized, powerless, and trapped. The weather’s change from benign calm to violent unpredictability over a few days was hard to comprehend. Those ten days of calamity were very difficult to accept.

Now my life is back to normal, which is wonderful.

How do I evaluate my calamity? My setbacks are small compared to what other people are facing. There are so many who are dealing with serious irrecoverable health issues. Floridians living in the path of Hurricane Ian face months or years of loss, rebuilding and financial stress. Ukrainians face terrible life and death incidents that seem to have no end. By comparison my calamities seem trivial and somewhat embarrassing to admit.

We often only treasure something after it is lost. I had been taking my health and safety for granted. It was a shock when they were lost. The days of sickness make me thankful for my days of health.

I appreciate having an ordinary Autumn day. I felt an amazing elation when the lights in the house flickered on again. I won’t take for granted the trappings of 21st century life: abundant food, energy, communications, information, travel and comfort. Life is good, very good.

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.” Henry David Thoreau (https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/lost-quotes)

Autumn

Summer is Ending

I have a hard time enjoying September. Although the weather is still pleasant, a notable change happens after Labour Day. Holidays are over, school and university classes begin. Thoughts turn to work, the harvest, and preparation for winter.

I am sad about the end of summer, and my plans for autumn are blank. In years past I I felt a desire to create paintings suitable for gallery showings or to do home improvement projects. Today I don’t feel inspired by these activities.

Autumn is very much the metaphor for aging. I feel the aging process more strongly than ever. A new season of life is approaching. Are the good times of summer coming to an end?

Change of Season

Like each autumn day becoming slightly cooler and darker, the vitality of mid-life is waning. I take more naps, I need a magnifier to read, and I feel twinges in my hip. What will the autumn of my life bring? Should I accept this slow deterioration?

Never Say Die

An urgent voice is saying “Grab the ring while you can”. Don’t settle for a slow slumbering autumn. It’s telling me to act on my bucket list. Try a few new things! Have an adventure! Travel to Japan, meditate quietly, create a new recipe or snorkel in the Caribbean.

Dreaming of new adventures is helping me accept September. I want to get emotional about something! Let new experiences pull me onward.