I’m sure I did stupid,silly, things when I was younger. As I age though, I’ve noticed that it seems to happen more frequently. In my quest to become more efficient I’ve become just the opposite. Wednesday is garbage eve at our house. That means that usually I haul every bag of trash that we’ve accumulated throughout the week down our long driveway for the garbage men, who arrive at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning. If I leave early I gather up that last bag of trash, toss it in the back of my car to be dropped off on my way out. Last week the inevitable happened. The trash went to my appointment with me to seep and smell in my hot car. Opening the car door several hours later revealed the pungent odor of weeks old leftovers.

Each time I have an incident like this I think about Dementia, Alzheimer’s, and mini stokes. Could this be the first step to the nursing home ?   I think the public is just too educated. We know too much.  A mental lapse in someone young is something to laugh about, in someone older it’s a symptom.

I try to keep things in perspective by remembering the silly things I did when I was younger. The day that I wore sunglasses with one missing lens as I ran merrily around town doing errands.  Or the time I spent the the whole afternoon doing business with an x over one eye. (I had been to the eye doctor and the staff there had placed the x to be certain to work on the correct eye)

Drug companies spend billions of dollars each year to make certain that we know which drug to take for any symptom. They have wonderful commercials.  I find myself watching them as if they are mini- series.  The people are just like us except they are having more fun.  Their families are caring and laugh a lot.  Watching these commercials  enables us to  diagnose our problems and ask for the correct prescription on our trip to the doctor. This prescription becomes one of the four billion written every year.

Every horrible detail of every disease is described in detail on the internet or television. How many times do we sit with our eyes glued to a talk show while a sobbing woman tells of her medical trials. We can’t help but think that every change in our body is a symptom, one that could lead to our demise. Maybe we should stop thinking about being sick and concentrate on being well. Maybe the answer is as simple as enjoying each day, living a healthy life and limiting our media.