(July) 1 Paul Gundy, MD, Chair of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaboration, Director, Healthcare Technology and Strategic Initiatives for IBM

July 2-31
Summer Schedule
No Conferences

Another birthday has recently passed and I realized that I have to stand on tiptoes to see over all the years. I now peruse the obituaries after the sports page and note that more and more listings are younger than I am.

Many aging people reach a time when unlike Robert Browning who said, "Grow old along with me. The best is yet to be." feel it takes courage to grow older. For many the growing older may have many joys. Their longevity is a splendid teacher. They have no doubt experienced sadness in their long lives such as the death of loved ones but the delight of seeing their children grow and prosper and the memories of past pleasant events blur these sadder events.

We all have "role models" of elderly people. Mine is a 91 year old woman who lives independently still on the family acreage in rural Nebraska. She has sustained two hip fractures, a mid-shaft femoral fracture with a non-union but she still gets around with a walker and until recently still drove her car into town to get groceries. Stubbornly independent and hearing impaired she is quite astute regarding farm issues and Nebraska football. She lives for visits and phone calls from her five children one of whom happens to be my wife. She chafes at the thought of ever going to a nursing home and has taught me the wisdom of compromise in medical decision making where too often we physicians push for the ideal and forget the practical. We tend to patronize older patients making decisions for them and protecting them all in their best interest thereby giving them the message we know what is best for them.

Many aging people have great inner strength to cope with the biological and social losses which may accompany old age. Many also have discovered some gains which come with aging. They may have found their judgments have become more balanced; their insights such as the meaning of human life have deepened; that new interests have emerged; and they may feel freer to ignore social pressures and less concerned with what others will think of them. The saying "You can't teach an old dog new tricks" may be wrong. The older I get the more I see interestingness in the ordinary such as growing a garden.

It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. The more memories the more roses. That is why Swift said, "No wise man ever wished to be younger."

John J. Mohr, MD