And at your age!

To finish a longer run today I took a lap around the Traverse City Civic Center. I passed moms pushing strollers and toddlers on training wheels. A pretty young woman jogging in the opposite direction gave me a thumbs up. The track forms a circle. Just before I finished around she came again. Though I was nearing nine miles I straightened up and tried to look tough. She smiled and said, “Good going, and at your age!”

After I crossed my finish line a truly old man came shambling along. With one shoulder hiked above the other, he scraped his shoes on the asphalt. He wore earplugs. As we passed I clearly heard Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. He had it cranked. He was listening to a song about a rock musician taking a “little girl” (groupie) on a “magic carpet ride” (drug trip).

Maybe I am getting old, after all.

Last Friday I failed for the second night in a row to get to sleep. A dull pain that had first appeared two days earlier grew more intense. I could put my finger in the small of my back exactly where it hurt. Then it hurt more. Then I could not find a posture in which it did not hurt. Now, I thought God put our appendixes in the lower left abdomen. It turns out God put them on the right side. But because I misunderstood I felt a rising panic. I awakened Linda and said, “We have to go in. I think it's my appendix.” Thank God I was wrong. If I had not feared a rupture I probably would not have said a word.

After oral and physical exams, cat scans and a couple of visits from the vampires (for tests, they alleged) in came the verdict: I have a blood clot in my left lung. They guess it came from an arm or leg, then traveled through the veins to my lung, which trapped it. Turns out this happens all the time. Virtually all these clots harmlessly dissolve into the tissues surrounding wherever they stop. But this one was too big. As the Bible says it “set its tent”, stayed long enough to prevent blood flow to a small portion of lung. That little piece of my lung is dead. It will not regenerate, but my lungs will—in yet another proof of God's incredible design—develop added capacity to compensate. As long as I am a good little boy, take my drugs and follow my diet, I have no restrictions. Hence the nine mile run today.

Hence the young woman putting me in my old place. How humbling aging is. Only the most obtuse man can retain the illusion of control over his own mortality while laying in a hospital bed, wearing the “Summer Breeze” gown, and being told by the nurse to “roll over so I can stick you in your tush”. Another nurse, listening to my lower lung, said, “Hmm. Not much going on in this part.” I wondered whether my life insurance policy is paid up. I think this way as often as, well, I think this is the first time I have ever thought this way.

On the other hand, life is good. God is good. Today I got to go running. It is a perfect Up North day. The sky is a pure blue and the gentle wind was in my face on the homeward leg. I passed groves of cedar and pine, families on bikes, disabled people being rolled down the path by their helpers.

My roommate at the hospital had been incarcerated there for three weeks. His doctor had told him he would go home that afternoon. Then the “wound team” came to re-bandage his foot. As they took off the old gauze they could not help making sounds of dismay. I could smell the rot from fifteen feet away. “What? What do you see?” he kept asking. They paged a doctor. The doctor told him his last two toes have to come off. He won't leave the hospital anytime soon.

Getting older happens only to the fortunate. Living well while we age happens mostly to those who remember who really is in charge. Sometimes it gets extraordinarily difficult to believe in a loving God. I pray that my experience will prepare me for far sterner tests to come.

And in the meantime, I hope to savor every last mile my feet carry me.