Maria and I went back to see Dr. Daly this morning to check up on my re-imagined foot. She says the foot is doing well, but I need additional surgery to straighten one of my toes, which will be in a week or so. I must return to the surgical boot and skip showering for a while. The rest of the foot looks good, and this week, we’ll also see David Messiner, the orthotic specialist who built my brace. It’s time to upgrade the padding.

(Maria photo: The doctors and hospitals are wearing masks again; COVID-19, despite claims to the contrary, is still here.)

A good friend of mine is going through some serious medical issues along with a family member. It’s been a rough year for her family, and we are having a valuable discussion about her statement that it isn’t fair for her partner to be going through a lot of different health problems.

What isn’t fair about it? I asked, thinking about my intense healthcare year. Her family member did everything he was supposed to do, she said but ended up with even more health problems. He’s older than me. The fates have done them dirty, she suggested.

The family has been through a lot and has handled it courageously, something I often hear from older people dealing with doctors and hospitals. They do feel unlucky and surprised by their illnesses.

Her messages got me thinking about fairness and old age and wondering if there is such a thing as “fairness” when one gets to be my age. I have a curious philosophy about aging and health; most people my age don’t share it or even want to think about it. I don’t claim to be correct; I’m just trying to be honest about my feelings. And I don’t ever tell other people what to do.

I don’t believe there is anything fair or unfair about health issues and the elderly. I see it as life, not as a shock or trial. Nobody likes to get sick or feels good about it. Yet it will happen to all of us who have lived a long time, everyone reading this, everyone we know, and everyone we love, including pets.

Because discussions about aging and death are considered heresy by the mainstream media, people are rarely forced to think about how they will die until it’s upon them. At that point, it’s almost impossible to change.

Sickness, age, and death are the things we all share, no matter politics, religion, or other values. Everyone and everything we love will die as well. There is no difference between woke and the rest in the other world, between red and blue or right and left. Death is humbling and universal at the same time. It would be helpful to talk about it and think about it before death is on the table.

Aging is its own master, and it moves at its own pace. I follow it; it doesn’t follow me. How I respond decides how long I will live.

It’s not about one decision a doctor makes; it’s about the thousands of decisions I’ve made all of my life. Aging doesn’t happen in a bubble, and I never thought about it when I was young. When I got older, I hid from doctors, claiming I didn’t like Western Medicine (at that point, I didn’t know what it was; I was just afraid to be tested.) That lousy decision nearly got me killed.

I don’t see what fairness had to do with it, to be honest. Stupidity on my part was closer to the truth. Lots of people die horrible deaths – illness, violence, guns, car crashes. Life can seem unfair. But we are all responsible.

My doctors are tasked with putting the puzzle together; they’ve done a great job. My attitude has changed. Moping and depression are toxic to me. When there is trouble, I get to work and keep going.

What do I think of this? It isn’t straightforward, and everyone has a different idea. I’ve formed my feelings about it.

Up until my open heart surgery in 2014, I had never set foot in a hospital (I got the tonsils out when I was four), and since then, and recently, I’ve had six or seven surgeries, some serious. I’ve been scrambling to understand my body, what I did to it, and what I can do in the future to preserve my life.

The bottom line for me is that as we get older, we get sicker. Even 50  years ago, I would have been dead many times over by now. So would my 80-year-old friend, who feels cheated somehow.

Is it “fair” for me to have gotten this far while billions of humans have no health care of any kind; they get sick and die the way they used to? Is it “fair” for a mother to go shopping at Wal-Mart and get killed by a broken and ill person with the same rifle they use in combat? Or is it “unfair” for our congressmen and women to hide their greed and callousness by refusing to stop gun violence?

My friend says they made all of the “right” decisions and just got sicker as if the illness could have been prevented,  but after my experiences, I also don’t think of health care in terms of “right” and “wrong” decisions. Sometimes we got lucky, sometimes not.

I take responsibility for my health; I don’t blame the doctors of the hospitals. They do the best they can; I do the best I can. TV and the movies have fostered the idea that doctors are magicians who can cure anything. When I’m sick, I get to work and stay there until it’s better. That isn’t possible for everyone. It was possible for me.

I learned early on that this isn’t true for me, this idea that if I made good decisions, I would remain healthy. It was a good decision for me to decide to have a toe amputated rather than risk infection (I’m a diabetic). It was a poor decision to wait several years to do it; that decision almost cost me my whole foot.

It is unfair for me to have these foot difficulties, or is it just the luck of the drawn, the way I ate and exercised, the decisions I made about my diet, smoking, drinking and exercise, and health care long before I was diagnosed? It seems those were my decisions, not my doctors.

I feel that so many people I know feel understandably persecuted by the ways of life rather than accepting life as it is. Because it’s taboo to mention or discuss death in our culture, people seem stunned when the predictable and the inevitable occur. I always felt severe health problems were for others, not for me. A friend dealing with open heart surgery called me last week to ask what he should think about it.

It’s not for me to tell you that, I said, that’s your job. Attitude, I have learned, is critical, especially for men; we are notoriously depressed, even angry, when they get sick and need surgery, according to the nurses I have spoken with. I won’t heal quickly if I don’t think I can heal. I have no data to back this up; it’s just my feeling.

I am not happy to undergo all these surgeries, but I am grateful and thrilled to be in good health at age 76 despite these difficulties. I owe a lot to the doctors, I owe a lot to me.

Nothing about this seems unfair to me, although healthcare inequities are unfair.

Only an infinitesimally small number of people have access to the kind of health care I have and the doctors who have helped me to be healthy and stay healthy. This morning, when Dr. Daly told me I needed another surgery on my foot, I did wince a bit. But mostly, I was grateful. Another problem was forestalled by good medicine and my willingness to do what needed to be done for my foot.

I’ve become a fan of preventive medicine. Stop it before it gets bad.

Dr. Daly performed a miracle on my foot. I was inches away from severe infections, and together, we agreed to get ahead. My history of health care is the story of my arrogance, denial, and anxiety. Doctors had nothing to do with it. I nearly killed myself a half dozen times without knowing what I was doing or what the d decisions I was making were really about.

If anyone mistreated my body or gave it short shrift, it was me. If anyone is responsible for getting healthy and staying there, it’s me. My doctors are not Gods and Goddesses. They are human, like me, and some things make the right decisions and sometimes the wrong ones.

I only ask that they do their best, and they ask the same of me. My cardiologist says attitude has much more to do with health and recovery than medicine. When I see her, she asks me if I am happy. If I say yes, she says, “Great, so you are healthy.”

I believe she’s correct. I’m happy to have the chance to fix this toe so it can stay on my foot and help me walk.

I have nothing to say but thanks to the spirits for giving me much more life than I had a right to expect. I will be grateful for any more that they can spare.