A Peek at the Future

I had surgery on Friday. As a sign that I'm getting older, I somehow gave myself a hernia picking up my backpack on the first day of our last trip to Europe.

Mrs. Done by Forty and our friends were kind enough to carry my pack for me the rest of the trip. And my doctor said it wasn't serious. As long as I didn't lift heavy stuff, I could postpone the surgery until January in order to pick different insurance during open enrollment. 

Waiting saved us over a thousand dollars, but came with the cost of not being able to play kickball in the fall.

After a few hoops with the insurance company were cleared, the day of the surgery finally came. Almost everyone at the surgical center was cool, but our anesthesiologist turned out to be a dick, opining as I was about to go under that, "The anesthesia drugs will sting going in, but only little girls complain about it." I remember wanting to say something to the douche bag, but didn't because I didn't want to piss off the guy who'd be responsible for keeping me alive for the next hour.

I woke up and made a fool of myself in a drug filled haze, apparently trying to convince the staff that they should all watch Scrubs ("Have you seen it? It's really good!") and then, sigh, did impressions of JD and Turk. I'm not proud of it.

The next day, the anesthesia had worn off and the pain set in. I couldn't get in or out of bed without a crazy sharp pain in my groin, and Mrs. Done by Forty had to help me get from one room to another. She prepared my food, brought me a Percocet and a glass of water every six hours, and laid extra blankets on me to keep me warm.

Forget about putting on socks or pulling on a pair of underwear by myself: Mrs. Done by Forty would have to help with that, too.

It was humbling.

The whole time I was hobbling around, I thought, man, this is going to be my life someday. When I'm seventy or, if I'm lucky, eighty, this might be my reality every day. Having to deal with some pain just to stand up or put on my socks, and having to rely on someone else to do mundane tasks like prepare my meals, or to do things around the house.

When will I stop being able to drive a car, or run errands? When will I stop outsourcing things because I think it's a good use of my time, and start outsourcing things out of necessity?

Someday, I won't be able to do things on my own anymore. I'd need help. And the whole time, I might be in some pain just getting through the day.

Depressing, I know.

But this morning, as I'm able to move around better, I'm definitely appreciative of being able to bend over and pet my dog. And I have a weird sense of accomplishment in being able to make breakfast for us, even if it is just scrambled eggs and toast.

I figure I have thirty or forty good years left (I hope), before life changes pretty dramatically. Who knows? It might be many fewer than that.

Either way, I need to recognize the urgency of the situation.

As you might know by now, baby Done by Forty is on the way. And friends, I know so very little about what to expect in parenthood. Initially, I'd thought we'd save some of the things we wanted to do (like living abroad and doing some slow traveling, or maybe doing a Sprinter van conversion and trying out van life for a while) until after the kids were off to college.

But with the number of good years I have left, that's just not going to work. Thirty years from now, I'm going to be in my late sixties. There's no time to wait.

Whatever Mrs. Done by Forty and I want to do with our lives is going to involve the kiddos, too. That might mean looking in to some home schooling options if we live abroad for a year, and putting my teaching credential to work for once. And if we want to convert a van and travel to national parks in the summers, we might have to get creative if we're going to sleep four in there.

But either way, there isn't time to waste.

And even though it's coming in the form of a shooting pain in my groin, I'm grateful to get a bit of a jolt, and realize just how little time there is on the clock.

As always, thanks for reading.


*Photo is from Army Medicine at Flickr Creative Commons.