Since my mysterious collapse in the kitchen two weeks ago, several good friends have urged me to consider buying an IWatch. It has several helpful App related functions, I was reminded, including calling for help if I fall, tracking my heart rate when I move around, measuring my blood sugar and oxygen intake, not to mention getting e-mail, texts, and news on my wrist instead of having to exert myself by picking up my Iphone.

The new apps sound great. My friends are surprised I don’t want to buy one.

I admire Steve Jobs and his legacy; I use my computer and Iphone every day. He always fought for people like me to get computers we could understand.

I appreciate my friends who care about me. And no, spare your e-mails. Honestly, I don’t consider myself ungrateful for my decisions, even to the well-meaning.

This week, Apple presented its new product line, and I saw the smitten reporters ooohing and ahhing about all the latest apps on an IWatch and the miraculous things they can do for sick and older people.

This is the best self-absorption toy imaginable if one is old and anxious. I’m not buying one.

We live in a nation of warnings and alarms, and we are taught to believe that death happens to anyone but us and that if we have enough money, we can forestall death or push it into the future. If you think that, get the new miracle IWatch.

I told my friends I didn’t want an Iphone. It doesn’t fit my health care, aging, or narcissism ideas.

As I often write, I have many opinions, but I do not tell other people what to write, say, feel, or do.

I know lots of very admirable people who love their Iwatches and keep careful count of the steps they take and the heartbeats that follow, checking their texts and oxygen while jogging or swimming in a pool.

My reasons:

Iphones feel incredibly selfish to me. They promote self-worship and the dread of aging.

I am eager to decrease the time spent in front of screens or on other devices like regular cell phones.

I don’t want to monitor myself all day, like some of my friends; it’s another device to obsess on, another way to make me and my heart and blood the most essential thing on the earth. It isn’t. It’s another blow in the war against silence and thought—something else to get in my head and roll around.

I get regular check-ups on my heart, and I understand what shortness of breath, chest pain, and other symptoms of heart failure are and mean.

That’s how I learned that I needed open heart surgery. I meet with a diabetic specialist four times a year. I monitor my blood every day.

I don’t need a hundred reasons to look at my watch all day and be reminded continuously and for the rest of my life that I have heart disease and diabetes and might fall one day.

I check my blood sugar three times a day, sometimes more often. I know how high and low numbers translate into health, energy, and focus.

I’d rather pay attention to other people than fall in love with my vitals.

I’ve taken every reasonable precaution to keep from falling. An IWatch won’t prevent me from losing balance one day. There are risks to being older, and no wristwatch can eliminate them all. I accept them as the price for being lucky to be alive.

My philosophy of aging has become more evident as I grow older, and it’s the right philosophy for me.

Attitude means a lot when it comes to health, and excessive monitoring, like noxious old talk, is a way to focus constantly on aging,  monitoring oneself and death.

I hope I have better things to do.

Keeping track of my health is why God created doctors’ clinics, regular appointments, and tests. I value my doctors and am eager to hear how I am doing from them. I don’t need a cute new smart wristwatch to tell me.

It isn’t clear why I fell two weeks ago; it seemed related to new medications and their interaction with something I was eating. Except for falling on my head, I do not have balance problems. My heart tested find.  If I fail, I will yell for help, call for help, or die where I lie.

I am 76 years old, and people my age and younger are reported dead every other day. I will be one of them one day; no watch can stop that.

I am not interested in prolonging my life far beyond its natural expiration date, something I see causes older people as much pain and discomfort as the illnesses and ailments they suffer. When does life lose its meaning?

That’s the question for me to wrestle with and understand.

I have to wish to live forever. I am happy to live for as long as I can care for myself.

Older people spend much of their time in hospitals and doctor’s offices; much of that is inevitable and necessary. But my goal is to stay healthy enough to spend less time thinking about medicines, scheduling doctor’s appointments, and complaining about health care.

Older people I know talk and worry endlessly and understandably about medical costs, the price of medications, their health, their knees, and the caretaking they do or will need. For hundreds of years, the death experience for the elderly lasted about two weeks.

Now, aging into death lasts an average of six years in hospitals and nursing homes, costing a fortune while the patients endure significant pain and discomfort.

I don’t wish to be that person.

Monitoring my heart and vital organs a dozen times a day is another incitement to call a doctor, take a test, and obsess about sickness, dying, and death.

This may be helpful to many, but to me, it means making a lot of money for Apple, pharmacies, insurance companies, and doctors, who now average about $350,000 a year in income, a considerable chunk going to older people whose lives are often prolonged beyond reason or meaning, and significantly increasing suffering, anxiety and wreak havoc with families.

I don’t want this to be me if I can help it, and I can help it. One way is to embrace life and accept it.

I accept medical procedures that help me be healthy before serious trouble (I’m doing that) comes.

Another is to avoid medical devices, miracles, and experiments that will keep me alive beyond the time my body can function by itself. Apple is an intelligent company that makes innovative products for smart people. But are they necessary for me?

My friend Jerome got an IWatch from his sons, who worry about his heart and the dangers of falling.

When I saw him, he looked obsessively at his watch every few minutes. I asked him if he needed to know the time that often.

He said he was checking his heart and oxygen intake; he said he had an app that monitored his diabetes and blood pressure.

“I have to keep checking it to keep up,” he said, “It gets addictive, and I want to be alerted if anything is wrong. I call the doctor’s office a dozen times a week when the numbers change.” One day, he added, it might save his life. Jerome is 74 years old. Was he saving his life or turning it over to a watch?

It felt like Jerome had also given his control over life and death to his children, who meant well but may not be doing him any favor. My daughter once asked me if I thought about an IWatch, and I told her no, I didn’t want one.Fair enough, she said, she wouldn’t want one either. I love her for that.

I respect Jerome and wish him luck. He is what I don’t want to be and don’t intend to be. I am a follower of radical acceptance, and I will let life speak for me and decide when it’s time for me to go. In a few years, I will decline heart or other surgeries that might prolong my life.

I’ve had a long and good life, and I expect to have more energy and more love and meaning than ever.

But it will be on my terms, not theirs or not Apple’s; aging is what I make of it; it can be a prison or a new beginning. I’m going with the latter.

And I don’t need a watch to get me there.

My cardiologist is one of my favorite doctors.

When she sees me, she asks me if I am happy.

When I say yes, which I usually do, she says, “Good,  then you’re healthy.”

And then she presses a stethoscope to my heart.

Then, I eat what I’m supposed to eat and forget about it until the next check-up.

It works for me.