Occam's Razor

Another birthday rolled around yesterday. For once the first of February felt like it should: bitterly cold and snowing. I am not much on celebrating birthdays, which is probably why I scheduled an outpatient procedure on my birthday. Specifically, I had a colonoscopy, a distasteful but necessary procedure for us insured humans age fifty plus. This being my second time, I knew what to expect. When I had my last one at age fifty, I could get it done in a local surgical center. This time, because I was subsequently diagnosed with sleep apnea, it meant going to the hospital instead. It also meant arising at three a.m. to down a second dose of medicine guaranteed to empty your digestive track, not to mention spending the day before at home on a liquid only diet, trying to make a bottle of white grape juice substitute for solid food.

Happily the procedure went well. One reason I was repeating it after only five years instead of the normal ten years is because polyps run on my mother’s side of the family. She never had a colonoscopy and as a result due to a huge polyp had to have part of her large intestine removed. Sure enough, yesterday my gastroenterologist found a polyp, but it was easily sliced off and removed. By ten a.m. I was home eating solid food none the worse for the experience but with lovely color photos of my large intestine showing the emerging polyp.

That’s kind of how it should go at age 56. You have given up chasing immortality and have made peace with conforming to the practices of modern medical science instead. Few men or women my age can credibly claim they have the strength and stamina they had when they were in their 20s. Perhaps I could get the illusion of it if, like some foolish and better moneyed people my age, I ingested steroids and got shots of HGH (human growth hormone). Along with the HGH, regular injections of testosterone probably would make me feel manlier. Marketers think they know what I need and lately it’s been testosterone supplements. I can rarely go to a web site without seeing ads telling me about the benefits of testosterone therapy. I remain skeptical. Estrogen replacement therapy for women has proven to have more minuses than pluses for most women. I doubt testosterone supplements and shots are without serious risks as well. Perhaps it will keep my hairline from receding, or suddenly make me attractive to women half my age, but I doubt that is worth any of the potential complications.

Or perhaps I should do what has worked so well for my father, age 86, still reasonably healthy and walking around. Perhaps I should simply give up on the silly pseudo science, ignore the multitudes of marketers of immortality and pragmatically get regular exercise and regular checkups instead. My father has been battling precancerous melanomas for decades, but he is still alive. This is thanks to regular trips to the dermatologist, which often results in skin removal or replacement. It doesn’t appear that I have inherited that particular condition, but it does look like I have my mother’s tendency toward polyps in the large intestine, so I best better bear the indignity of these colonoscopies every five years.

I also inherited her family’s tendency toward tallness, narrow throats and a large uvula, all of which contribute toward a tendency to snore and which eventually lead to a diagnosis of sleep apnea. For a whole year now I have been sleeping with the aid of a BPAP machine. It regularly fills my lungs with air, even when my body would prefer to stop breathing for a while. For a month or two using the machine was more torture than restful until I figured out how to put the mask on properly so it did not hiss at me during the night. Now the BPAP allows me to get genuinely restful sleep, and many nights I sleep like a baby. Waking rested gives me more energy than any shot of testosterone is likely to provide.

Maybe there is something unmanly about depending on regular checkups and medical science. Real men in their fifties, if you believe the ads, are supposed to be climbing mountains, roping steer, running marathons and bedding women in their twenties. What most real men my age are doing appears to be quite the opposite, at least according to my observations: eating too much crap and limiting their exercise to changing cable channels with their remote controls. I confess to eating too much crap myself, but I also eat plenty of healthy food, and since 1981 I have been getting regular aerobic exercise. My health is obviously not perfect, but it is better than most men my age. I can’t seem to go see any physician without getting blood drawn, so I have constant opportunities to tweak Vitamin D deficiencies, check my cholesterol or measure my triglycerides.

So at age 56 I remain a work in progress. I am realistic enough to know I won’t live forever but stubborn enough to insist that as much as feasible I will enjoy those years that remain. If that means sleeping with a BPAP machine for the rest of my life or having to endure the indignity of having my colon probed every five years, so be it. At least I am still here, in reasonably good health, and with (I hope, no guarantees) much more good life ahead of me. My testosterone levels may be receding like my hairline, but with luck the next thirty years of my life will be happier years with less heartache and struggle.

I’ll keep my physician on speed dial to make it so.