Don't Give Up
This past week I saw a tv show on the National Geographic
channel. A guy videotaped himself walking alone across Antarctica to
the South Pole - he wanted to break the record for this achievement.
Did he beat the clock? Did he even make it all the way? Did he even
survive? You'll have to see the show (or Google "Todd Carmichael"). But
at one point he explains to us - i.e. the camera - why he's so
determined not to give up. It seems his dad gave up on him twice -
once, before he was born, when the dad walked out on the mother, because
he couldn't deal with her pregnancy. And then, later, in some
connection with our hero's actions that wasn't made entirely clear, the
father committed suicide. With a gun. Heavy.
Another quest
motivated by parental abandonment is that of the medical librarian and
blogger Devera Kastner, "Healthy Librarian". The slides from a presentation she gave at the Centennial Conference of the Utah Library Association are available at
http://conference.ula.org/content/centenarian-strategies-how-stay-happy-healthy-fit-and-sharp-until-youre-100
In
the handout she reveals that her own quest was motivated by her
parents' experiences in later life. As she describes it on her blog:
My
dad survived a massive stroke at age 69, just as life was starting to
get nice-and-easy for him. Both daughters were married, he could work
less, and his first grandson (my now 30 year old son) was just 9 months
old. Time for the travel my parents had always put off.
He
lived on for 16 years after that initial stroke, until age 85, without
being able to speak, read, or understand language--and reading was his
joy--especially the New York Times. He lost mobility, and everything
else that makes life worth living. My dad was kept alive by powerful
anti-seizure medicines that prevented the severe seizures that were
caused by the strokes' damage to his brain. Later, he was kept alive
with the help of a feeding tube.
My mom lovingly and
without a single complaint took care of my dad at home for over 10
years, seeing her own health decline, and her world close in.
Care-giving stress brought her weight loss, friend-loss, and unknown to
her at the time, she was having her own silent imperceptible
micro-strokes, as well as angina, osteoporosis and high blood pressure.
A year after my dad passed away those tiny strokes had started to take
their toll on both her physical balance & memory. After a number of
falls, bone fractures, and full-blown strokes she spent her last year
in that wheelchair.
Ms. Kastner then paraphrases something Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn said to her:
"When
people tell me my diet's extreme, or too strict, I ask them, 'How would
you like to spend your last years in a nursing home, sitting in a
wheelchair, incontinent, immobile, unaware, with saliva dribbling out of
the side of your mouth?'"
Long before she met Esselstyn, she
saw that happen. As she drily puts it on her presentation slide, "Not
the retirement they expected."
http://www.happyhealthylonglife.com/happy_healthy_long_life/2010/06/updates.html
