Getting Old: Not For Sissies

By Marvin Druger  |  mdruger@syr.edu

 

My main complaint is that I hate getting older and being with old people. I taught more than 50,000 students in my career, and I’m used to being with young, energetic people

I had a pleasant dream last night. I dreamt that I was in Manhattan, staying at a fancy hotel by myself. I decided that it was time to exercise, so I put on my jogging outfit and started jogging on the streets of Manhattan. I jogged effortlessly and didn’t feel tired at all. My breathing was smooth and even. I was going to run on a familiar street, but decided to go on a different one. The jog was new and exciting. I ran past unfamiliar stores and houses. It was a long, pleasurable jog.

Then, I woke up.

Here I was in bed in a senior living center, recovering from a broken hip and wounds on the heels of my foot and ankle.

It all started on Jan. 1, 2025. I was walking from my car into a pharmacy when I spotted a shiny, new penny on the sidewalk. I always stop and pick up pennies that are on the ground. My theme is expressed in the following poem that I wrote:

 

One Penny

A little girl dropped me

Right at her feet,

I rolled from her pocket

Right onto the street.

I lay on the sidewalk

As people walked by,

They chose to ignore me

And I think I know why.

They don’t seem to know

Though I’m just one penny,

If they pick us all up

We add up to many.

  

I bent down to pick up the penny. “Wow. That’s good luck!” Then my left knee buckled and I fell hard on the sidewalk and felt a sharp pain in my hip. I knew I had broken it, and I didn’t even know if the penny was “heads” or “tails.” Two men picked me up and took me inside the pharmacy.

I felt like a TV commercial. “Take me to Crouse,” I said. Soon, the ambulance arrived and I was taken to Crouse Hospital. X-rays revealed a fractured hip. The next day, they operated on the hip and fixed it.

Then the year’s health adventures started.

I was sent to rehab in a local, senior living center. I won’t reveal names for fear of being sued, but the facility was horrible. There was virtually no care and the staff was awful. I was taking a medication that was supposed to stabilize at 15 ug/ml in the blood. They gave me an additional medication that interacted with the first medication, and the level of that first medication jumped to higher than 60 ug/ml. I felt dizzy and I fell, bruising my right hip, but not breaking it.

I was lying in bed and I asked the aide to get me the remote zapper for the TV. She threw it on my bed and said, “It needs batteries,” and she left the room. Where was I supposed to get batteries?

I was transferred to another senior rehab center with a good reputation. The care there was even worse.

When I pulled the emergency cord to get help, it would take an eternity for someone to show up. Aides yelled at patients. When I would explain that I had a colon surgery because of a twisted colon, the aide exclaimed, “I don’t want to know about your life history.”

All night long, other patients in the rooms along the hallway would be wailing, “Please help me.” Nobody helped.

Admittedly,, there was a shortage of aides. On one night there was one aide on duty to assist 20 patients. It was an unpleasant, dangerous experience.

Then, I transferred to a different senior living center in the area. This time, things went well. The care was excellent; the meals were good; and the room facilities were adequate. The facility was not very handicapped- accessible, but I was able to make adjustments.

At present, I have lived at this facility for about a year. The wounds on my heels are almost healed and my major ankle wound is healing slowly.

Living in a senior community has been difficult for me. It is another world. Residents are old and many are demented. The major activity seems to be eating meals. There is breakfast at 8 a.m, lunch at noon, and dinner at 5 p.m. There are activities planned, but I don’t participate. I am mostly in a wheelchair and am dependent on others for survival.

There are grim, silent faces and everyone seems lost in thought. Many sit silently in the family room and do very little, if anything. There seems to be a lack of interest and knowledge about the outside world and conversations are few, if any.  Nobody seems to know, or want to know, about what people did in their past lives. No resident here has ever asked me who I am, what I did in the past, why I am living here, etc. Everyone seems absorbed in themselves. I often wonder what they are thinking. Despite the apparent lack of interest in finding out about other residents’ histories, the residents are kind to each other and caring.

I sometimes get the grim feeling that residents are just hanging around waiting to die. Indeed, three of the residents with whom I enjoyed conversations did pass away.

I do a poetry reading once a month for the residents. Few people talk to each other and names are known by the staff, but not by the residents. To me, the environment is very depressing, although I try to keep busy doing exercise, reading, writing, watching TV and doing jigsaw puzzles. I seldom talk to anyone.

I did ask someone what she was planning to do if she recovered and was able to leave the facility. Her sad reply was, “I have no place else to go.”

I complained to a staff member about a resident who was totally absorbed in eating meals and nothing else. He never talked to anyone about anything. The staff member responded, “Everyone is here for a reason.” This truthful remark made me more tolerant of such behavior.

My main complaint is that I hate getting older and being with old people. I taught more than 50,000 students in my career, and I’m used to being with young, energetic people.

Getting old presents psychological and physical problems. I can’t believe old age has happened so fast, and I can’t get used to the fact that I am not able to do things that I did routinely in the past. Walking is difficult and everything I do becomes tiring. My son now drives my car and I no longer can just take a nice drive somewhere. I am dependent on the help of others for survival.

My companion has some injuries that will prevent her from doing gardening. I told her that my gardening has been reduced to watering two cactus plants on my windowsill. Old age requires adjustments. That’s why one of my themes is to “do more before you HAVE to do less.”

Life and death are mysterious. Despite religious beliefs, nobody really knows the secrets of life and death. So, we should make the most of it while we can.