As I’ve gotten older, I’ve had parts of me stop working the way that I believe they were intended to work. I’m not thinking of the torn meniscus in each knee, the thumb joint replacement in my left hand, the fusing of all eight bones in my right hand to keep it from curling in upon itself, the carpal tunnel repair in both hands, the fusing of two vertebrae in my neck, or the reconstruction of my right foot. Most of those can be attributed to wear and tear from years of martial arts training coupled with a very sedentary life style. Rather, I’m thinking about the occasions when parts of me just wear out. A few years ago the doctor put me on a Bipap machine and an oxygenator at night while I sleep, not because I snored, though my wife indicates I may have on occasion made soft soothing sounds as I slumbered, but because I was not getting enough oxygen as I slept. Suddenly my bedroom was more like a critical care unit at night than a place for respite from the days’ stresses. This week I was informed that I had atelectasis, the lower parts of my lungs had collapsed. I happened upon this information in a brief note communicated by my physician in their electronic patient communication system. Other than a suggestion that I might begin deep breathing exercises, I had no other communication of information. A partially collapsed lung, actually two, and all I got was the advice to breathe more deeply?

I confess to suddenly feeling like The Deacon’s Masterpiece, are you familiar with it? It’s a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes telling of “The Wonderful One Hoss Shay”, a buggy built to perfection that lasted for one hundred years, then fell apart all at once.
…Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundreth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You’re welcome. — No extra charge.)
…What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

My quandary is how I best deal with these bits and pieces as they fall off. Do I just soldier on with a stiff upper lip? Is that a kind of acceptance? Or as Dylan Thomas would have it do I “burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light”. And how does that reconcile with the ridiculous little plastic tube with three colored balls in it that I am supposed to “float for eight seconds” with my breath to build up my long capacity again, (A procedure that brings on coughing fits and a vague sense of passing out) which I bought online after in depth research on dealing with atelectasis? It doesn’t feel very soldierly to use, yet doing nothing seems like being a sheep led to market.

I try not to complain or talk too much about such things, not because I don’t want to, but because I hate it when others do and besides I know that it’s just a part of life, this getting older. I’m not that fond of talking to other people anyway.

So what will I do? I don’t really have an answer just yet. For now I’ll keep blowing in the silly little tube, walking around the block when I can and hoping the other parts keep working a bit longer. If that is keeping a stiff upper lip or soldiering on, then that’s what I’m doing, though it feels more like just being without a lot of complaining. Besides, there are many places Lydia would like to see and I want to take her there.