Leaning South...

...Or what happens when your boobs begin kissing your kneecaps...In other words OLD AGE ain't for the weak of heart...

Growing old means your gonna SAG...BIG TIME. Boobs kissing kneecaps is only one of the sag areas age forces upon us. There's the wattle...and I don't mean the one being swung around by Tom Turkey when he's trying to catch the eye of Henrietta Turkey...no I mean the one attached to YOUR sagging, wobbling, flaccid throat.

Oh, and we're not done with the bird comparisons that aging brings to us...how about those crow's feet that suddenly span out from your eyes. Now I gotta be honest here, I don't ever remember any crows landing on my face and doing a Walk-about on it...do you? Yet here I am with footprints my doctor attributes to crows that even my mirror reflects back at me. Makes me wonder if those crows aren't a lot like the elves that show up at the shoemaker's shop at night. Do you think those crow are only plowing their foot-roads onto my face at night?

Liver spots...what in the world are liver spots? My liver is somewhere inside my body...and no I'm not terribly sure without yanking out my Human Body Atlas just where that is. However, I'm pretty sure it isn't anywhere near my hands and yet liver spots are there, right where my satiny smooth, clear and silky flesh used to be. Now I really think I'd know if my liver hop, skipped, and jumped around inside me as it caroomed towards my hands so it could leave spots behind...yet for the life of me, I can't remember it ever doing so.

Let us not forget, especially for us women, that most delightful of changes...mental...oops, I mean MENOPAUSE. Menopause is a blessing and a curse...unfortunately the curse part is really HOT...as it hot flashes. Good Lord, you can get those suckers ANYWHERE.

It's not easy trying to find places to cool down when a flash hits. Society, and the police tend to frown on you diving into a fountain when they hit. (Personally I think meat lockers make more sense, but then I go for the cold...unlike Olympians who go for the gold.)

We've covered many things so far, but let's move on to the EYES...What old age does to eyes is nothing short of CRIMINAL!!!!!

There's reading glass at Stage One of old age eye-itis. Bifocals at Stage Two...Tri-Focals at Stage Three...and please God let me be dead before I find out how bad I see at Stage Four! Where's Ben the Inventor when you need him?

Some would say reaching old age is a good thing because you can now revert back to your second childhood...You're assuming that the first was so great I'd want to relive it...but assuming that it was, or that the second one...you know, this one that is softened by the encroaching numbness of Alzheimer's, will be better. Second childhood means adult diapers...can you say ewww? I certainly can.

Incontinence...which means your pee-er goes into overtime...you pee every time you hear the word water, see a raindrop, imagine a snowflake, roll over in bed...(I know that has nothing to do with water, but your pee-er doesn't care it still wants to drag you out of bed and make you pee.) Your pee-er isn't the only part that decides it has been working in slow motion all of your life. Your intestinal track decides that since you are old and it may have only a few years left to torment your mettle, it too increases its production levels. Just move into your bathroom...it'll save you a lot of time.

All joking aside, though, there are some thing that growing old does NOT give us...it does not give us the right to cut in lines before others. Rudeness is no more acceptable in the elderly than it is in any age bracket. I know there are those that believe because they have a multitude of years under their belt, that should give them carte blanche to step in front of younger people in lines at x-ray clinics, drug stores, grocery stores, and the like. Not true. Age does accord us many courtesies...not expectations. Rude, arrogant behavior has no excuse at ANY age.

The THIRD Weekly McQuack Award Goes Toooooo...

Lordy but it is SOOOOOOO hard choosing among the multitude of worthy candidates, but after carefully considering them and tallying up their scores on the old Incompetence-o-meter, this weeks award HAS to go to Dr. Bones McQuack.

Bones is your conscientious, caring, compassionate, there for you through every terrifying step Orthopaedic Surgeon.

Dr. Bones is the one who schedules your appointment for 10:00 in the morning. You arrive to find the waiting room is SRO (STANDING ROOM ONLY...and YOU with your shattered left ankle, wobbling on the crutches that are causing your hands to blister, your armpits to screech and bleed, and your right foot to swell five times its normal size as it absorbs the full weight of your entire body), must try not to fall flat on your face while waiting for someone to get called back to the Secret Zones of Wisdom beyond the reception area...oh and when that happens, you also have to be agile enough (on those self-same crutches, with those self same blisters, achy armpits, and swelled right foot) to zip across the yawning breadth of the waiting room before some one's snotty five year old beats you to it.

If you are lucky enough to actually GET a seat, be prepared not be called back to that Secret Zone of Wisdom for at least another hour and a half...for such are the many, Many, MAny, MANy, MANY patients that the Medical God of Human Bones schedules to fill his office days.

At last, you stumble behind a rapidly moving nurse towards one of the SECRET Chambers of INNER Wisdom. There you are told to plunk yourself upon a high placed table almost covered by a strip of paper. How to get up there, since the nurse quickly turns tail and runs...the other way...like OUT...of your tiny chamber, is entirely up to you.

Personally, this is where I would give just about every dollar in my Monopoly Game to be like Samantha from Bewitched and have that cute nose twitching ability...but alas, I, like the rest of you, am but a mere nose-running mortal...and no amount of sneezing gets me up on that table. (I am going to spare you the kind of gyrations and contortions that eventually ARE required to get body and painfully mistreated ankle up on that demonically elevated, euphemistically entitled, examination table...I have NEVER had an Orthopod examine anything of mine while I was dangled from that table...have you?)

At last, the Gates from the Halls of Wisdom open and in walks the Bringer of Skeletal Wisdomology. Five minutes. That's all he gives his long suffering patient...(time is money...time is money.) We need to operate. He only operates, by the way, on Thursdays, and he's booked for every Thursday through the next five months...unless. it's an ABSOLUTE emergency. And for that we must first get a CT scan and come back with the film next week.

Next week...you now must navigate the same course as THIS week, but with the extra challenge of also having to carry those humongous x-ray envelopes while traversing the waiting room and the Inner Sanctum of Skeletal Wisdom...Lucky you!!

Again, the Gates from the Halls of Wisdom open (each time you see Dr. Bones, the pains in ankle, armpits, hands, and right foot increase exponentially.)...he flips the switch on the x-ray viewing machine. Yep, surgery. He CAN squeeze you in in three weeks. Come back next week when his surgery scheduler will be in THIS office...(he has four offices around the state, after all...so you cannot expect him to have her there for you TODAY!!!)...to get all the scheduling papers done.

You'd think that because you are NOT coming back to see Dr. Bones that you would be in-and-out quicker...wouldn't you? Oh yeah have too much faith! They are NOT there for you...or for your convenience...they are there for the doctor's bank account...only! Never...never...NEVER forget that.

Surgery...we don't need to do a blow by blow description, you know how disgusting it is right? Well,...except to say WHY DIDN'T DR. BONES MC QUACK DO AN MRI? If he had maybe he would not have made such a mess of the surgery. And unfortunately there are a LOT of Dr. Bones' out there.

The long and short of it is because he rushes through his time with you in office, he usually finds a bigger mess than expected...a mess he would have been prepared for had he done an MRI first. The outcome? Permanent damage. You may lose your ankle completely...or your hip...or cervical spine...or wrist...or elbow...rotator cuff...or lumbar spine...or knee.

Am I choosing Bones solely because of what my own personal experiences with slipshod orthopods? NO. I have talked with others who have had equally compelling horror stories from the surgeries they have received from overzealous, overbooked, money-hungry orthopaedic surgeons. This is an area that once botched by an alleged pro is nearly impossible to correct. I'm still trying to get mine corrected...seven years later...my daughter's is six years and in her case, I don't even know how many other Dr. Bones' later.

So to all the slip-shod Dr. Bones McQuack's I joyously award you this Third Weekly McQuack Award. You've earned it one splintered bone at a time.