My Body...

My Body
This is an item for all those people who are getting old and have to come to terms with it! You might find consolation in my plight.

I have this thing called a body which resolutely accompanies me wherever I go. When I want to run, it slows me down; when I want to relax and enjoy a film, it forces me to go to the toilet; when I want to eat as much as I want to, it tells me I am full and must stop; when I want to sing the purest of sounds, it makes me croak in a most unacceptable way; so it goes on…… Maybe you know the feeling?

Having the time to contemplate these things, it seemed appropriate to write them down so that you will know what my situation is whenever we meet.



From HEAD to TOES:We celebrate birthdays and I am supposed to be 66 years old. But long before that I was already a being in my mother’s womb. She was on holiday with the family at my paternal (descended from German Immigrants) grandmother’s remote farm, when she threatened to have a miscarriage. When she was a student, she had an accident on a gymnasium horse and, in the 1920s, the practice was to put people in a plaster caste for ages. By the time she emerged 18 months later, her left hip had fused and she was permanently disabled. Doctors said she would never be able to have children, but she had four of us! The brother of my deceased grandfather, who died as a result of being in concentration camps during both world wars, despite having been born in South Africa, was an amateur herbalist. Uncle Herman saved my fetus and thus my second name is Hermine. To us children, he was known as Uncle Sweetie and in his later blind state, remained a favourite with us as he always knew just where the sweetie jar was.
My mother said I ‘popped out’ at 10.30 on a Saturday morning. This is very handy information for the astrologers and I made a point of telling my kids their birth details in case they were ever asked….
When I was about 4 years old, my brother (we were far less aware of animal cruelty in those days) put turpentine under the tail of the donkey I was straddling and the poor animal raced off, with me falling and bumping my head on a stone. No doubt the temporary concussion can be blamed for all my strange behavior ever since.
Most of us are aware of the fact that we cannot always remember details as well as before, but I had this aberration a long time ago when dreaming in a brown trance was part of life. So you can be assured that I have Alzheimer ’s disease!! – it is just clever enough to hide when you first meet me.
A much more insidious problem is my inability to recognize faces. A few years ago I realized that as a Tourist Guide I was not always recognizing my customers (if a coach had the right number of passengers, even if they were not from my group, I would think we could drive off); I decided to have some tests. The extensive visual/brain tests were easy, but when I was shown pictures of faces and the researcher then showed me two pictures of faces, one of which I had seen before, I could not identify it. I know somebody who also has this ailment and she gave me the name for it, but I cannot remember it. It had an ‘S…….’!! somewhere. Does anybody recognize it?
Fortunately my hair has never been a problem. It is now peppered with grey and judging by my mother’s hair, will never again be one colour only. As I have never dyed it before, it will remain as it is. Many days go by and I suddenly remember that I have not combed my hair for a few days; It is thick and falls naturally into shape. Francis inherited those hairs and his dark brown mop could do anything. At school he went through a phase of having dreadlocks and when he found that the police were stopping him too often in the streets, decided to gradually shave it off. So it went to a Mohican style, a single ponytail and eventually to a bald head (number two on his razor) with a long tail in the nape of his neck. The latter eventually disappeared and he used to say. “Summer is here, I need to shave my head”. He died in June before the annual cropping. As he lay in his coffin, I put my fingers into his beautiful hair as I so often did when he was alive and the thought of that sensation still brings forth tears.
My eyes are a sore point: Knowing that I would be away from England for a couple of years; my optician suggested that I have the two cataracts which were forming, dealt with. The first operation was a success and I just could not imagine that the world was really as bright as it suddenly seemed. The second operation was not so good and I spent some days in hospital before they redid it. Because of its nature, the head of the Dept. who taught future Ophthalmologists, asked if he could film me for teaching purposes. I agreed and he was very happy with it. After the operation to redress the damage, he filmed me again and I managed to slip in my dissatisfaction with his two assistants who were supposed to watch him repair the damage, but who ignored him and chatted about their holidays throughout the operation. There is nothing more disconcerting than to lie there immobilized while your eye is being worked on and to hear this inane chatter next to your head! Needless to say, my eyes are not of the best and although I have deliberately decided not to wear spectacles so that the eyes can get exercise, I now need reading glasses and have to wear them around my neck at all times. Very frustrating when I think how very good my shortsightedness had been for threading a needle or reading instructions on a medicine bottle. On the other hand, I am convinced that they are printing things in a smaller case these days… I wake up with tired eyes and the need for a sweet coffee to get my blood sugar up to scratch; Diabetes!!
One could say there is nothing wrong with my ears. However, they are invaded by thousands of microbes every now and then and boy, do they party! The irritation of these dancing bodies can drive one mad. I end up (despite being told not to) with my ears in my hands and rubbing, pulling and thumping them to try and get those partying microbes to stop. Eventually they do, but not for very long. All kinds of potions and Anti-biotics have not dislodged them. Age is no doubt responsible for my increasing deafness!!. With this in mind and because I thought it the right thing to do, I enrolled in a course of sign language for the deaf. I really enjoyed the course and was coming up to the first year’s examinations when Francis suddenly died. My brain just wiped out everything that I had learnt and it was interesting to realize that there was nothing I could do to bring back that knowledge. A good excuse to give up, I know, but very real.
Years ago I realized that the one nostril in my nose was larger than the other. This is not important and no need for vanity to try and take over with plastic surgery. I do not have a very good sense of smell and attribute this fact to the malfunction of my nose. For years I could only get to sleep if I lay on my left side and I eventually worked out that there was a blockage on my left inner nostril which meant that I could not breathe normally through it and would soon suffocate it the right side and my mouth was blocked. I decided that if ever I was in a situation where I would be required to sleep in a different position, it is time to change. Being calm here in Addis means that I have been able to retrain myself and am now deliberately learning to sleep on my back and even trying to go onto the right side. But my sense of smell has not improved.
The first five weeks in Addis Ababa have been marred by my not looking after myself. The sudden change from the tropics at sea level to a very high altitude with decidedly changeable and colder weather has meant a cold which developed into a cough and subsequently did not want to go away. Unlike my Ghanaian experiences when I asked to be treated like everyone else, here at the local clinic the staff insisted on treating me first. So I did only a modicum of waiting in queues to have my details taken, to receive my own sterilized and packaged needle for a blood sample, a plastic container for sputum, pay for various services and to finally see the doctor. I did not have TB or anything more alarming than a bit of Pneumonia. However, an American girl staying in the same hotel shared my cough with me. The management asked her to leave because she has TB. We were all up in arms. She says she has asthma, but we think they were trying to get rid of her because a boyfriend spends most nights in her room. As she says, he does not have TB as a result of being so close to her. She has been allowed to stay. The doctor told me my blood pressure was high and that I must eat less salt and fat. Well, I love fat but have not seen any for months. The meat from scrawny goats, sheep and cattle is not fatty. And I never salt whatever food I am given. More to the point, I do not believe these bloodpressure machines:
There is a flap at the back of one’s throat which controls breathing and if this is too flabby, you end up snoring!!. How embarrassing can that be?! I try to warn people and offer them earplugs when we share a room. There are all kinds of things one can do to mitigate the situation apart from cotton reels being sewn onto the back of pyjamas. I spent nights at the Sleep Clinic being assessed. Because of my job being reliant on my voice, the chance of having that flap cut so that it repairs itself and gets tighter, was not an option. So we settled for ‘jaw extension plates’. This involves a set of dental plates which would gently push your bottom jaw forward, thus eliminating the flapping which makes such a noise. It works, but is a great nuisance and needless to say, I never kept up with it as my teeth were constantly being changed.
With the money I have spent on my teeth, I could have bought a house (well, maybe not in England). My mother was very good at insisting we all saw a dentist twice a year. When we lived in Zululand in the 1940s, the nearest town with a dentist was 60 miles away. To arrange for a car-lift was a major operation. Roads were untarred and I remember watching dogs bark and chase cars because they were so unusual. The dentist was no doubt kind, but seeing all those ‘ropes’ which operated the noisy drill was already enough to make one terrified of the pain. I might be fantasizing, but I think it was foot-operated. So one was brought up with the fear of the dentist, but also with the obligation to visit regularly. My teeth were never good, so when I came to England with its National Health free service in the 1960s and 1970s, I was a dentist’s dream. Once I remember a dentist marking 18 holes to be treated. This was even too many for the Dental Council, so I was summoned to have my mouth assessed and that dentist reckoned that 4 suggested repairs were not necessary. The reason was of course that dentists were paid for repairs, so the more they did, the more they earned. It was only when I went ‘private’ that the great relief of not having to have stuff done to my teeth every 6 months, became a reality. It is not always wise to give freely without obligation. I am reminded of the ‘give’ culture that so many NGOs here in Africa have developed. It is often not to the benefit of the recipients. Thank goodness, Habitat for Humanity insists on people doing their own work and never to expect any unsolicited help from outside except maybe volunteer labour. And then the volunteers are not allowed to even give away an old shirt. Of course we help with technical stuff like getting permission from the government to build on land, which is a complete nightmare! Wherever one is in Africa… A local NGO has helped to make one’s conscience a bit cleaner. They sell coupons for meal tickets so that you do not give money, but food, to beggars. Back to my teeth… For over a year before I left for Africa, I had teeth removed and titanium drilled into my jawbones. I have ended up with eleven implants and a mouth of porcelain teeth which is finally happy and causes no problems. What a relief after years of always being aware of some or other sensitivity or discomfort! If you can afford it, it is the best thing you can ever do for yourself. And let’s hope no teeth in a glass when one is older…
My father’s side of the family has a tendency to get round-shouldered and I am of course well on the way to this. Seeing a reflection of me in a shop window is quite disturbing. But I never learn either. My father’s sister and my favourite Aunt was a great dressmaker. She insisted that one should only wear clothes with collars, to disguise this deformity. But I never remember the few times I go clothes-shopping. It is not my favourite occupation, so I try to get away as soon as possible. When I was between school and University, my Aunt decided that I should be taught some social graces. I stayed with her for a few weeks and she enrolled me with a woman who taught one to walk with a book on the head and how to elegantly get out of a car. Amongst the things this poor woman tried to get me to absorb, was the fact that I had a certain unique colour, number and so on. The only thing I remember to this day is that my perfume is ylang-ylang.
Somewhere along the line during the last few weeks, I have ‘dislocated’ my left shoulder blade. I think it was sleeping on concrete floors in Ghana and before I began to try and sleep on my back. Nothing shows, but I cannot put my arm overhead when swimming crawl and it is painful to undo my bra strap. See how the problems multiply! I know it should be rested in a sling, but that is too much trouble…
Fortunately I am not too scarred, when one considers the very rough childhood I decided to have. I only wore shoes to school when I went to secondary school at age 12. And my only dress was the Sunday school one. When I went scrumping at night and hid pillow-cases of fruit under my bed, the maids never told my parents. Swimming in the river in the dead of night (yes, one day I did jump in and hit a piece of iron which left a scar on my leg) or going off into the forest for midnight feasts with the tails of tadpoles being fried on a tin lid, were all adventures that I treasure today. On my grandmother’s farm, she has a vicious-looking grass-cutter for feeding her chickens. It was designed to cut soft grass and one day my sister and I were playing with it and I decided to slice a piece of dried twig. It was too hard, ricocheted off and my soft finger was the victim of the rotating blades. Fortunately the finger bone was also too hard, but it was Uncle Sweetie who once again stemmed the blood and tied it so that no stitches were necessary. The scar has never faded. On my upper right arm is another scar, this time completely spoilt by very incompetent doctor’s stitches. The ones he put in my knee soon fell out and left a large scar there too. I had been driving the car of the boyfriend of my flat mate. We had spent the weekend in Mozambique and as the two of them were cuddling in the seat next to me, I was responsible for driving in the dark on a typical strip road. This means two thin rows of tar. And when another car approaches, one drives off the strips into sand. As I maneuvered the car for such an operation, the boyfriend suddenly felt the change, turned around and grabbed the steering wheel. We ended up with a written-off car, a sprained ankle and my back causing endless problems for years (broken coccyx bones inter alia). The local Portuguese Hospital was not of the best and I sometimes wonder whether the doctor who sewed up my wounds was sober. That is the only car accident of note I have ever been involved in. And when one thinks of the thousands of miles driven over the years, one can but be grateful.