Real Girl In The City

Why is it that after you reach a certain age you always think you’re sick?  It’s like you get a headache and all of a sudden you have a brain tumor.  Maybe your stomach hurts and next thing you know it’s an ulcer.  This is all in your mind of course but really when did we get so paranoid? When you are young you could break your leg falling of a swing and you would still run around the playground until your mother made you come in.  Now I have broken a leg so I do know that it is not physically possible to run around a playground afterward but you get the point.  It is like nothing stops you.  Yet as soon as you get older the smallest thing can send you rushing off to the doctor.

And for those of us that hate doctors that webmd.com is like the worst thing to ever be published.  All you have to do is go to the site and read about all these symptoms and before you know it you have decided that you have a heart condition brought on my stress and you’re showing signs through migraines and fatigue.  Before you know it you will be telling everyone that you only have so long to go.  It is just awful.  Not that the site doesn’t help with a lot of information but for us crazy folks that would rather think we have our own medical degree other than get off our butts and then a doctor touch us it’s wrong.  Don’t get me wrong.  Even we doctor-phobic types know that if you have had a headache for three weeks in a row you need to call someone or if you are having shooting pains up and down your stomach and if you try to eat nothing stays down its emergency room time.  We just cry and moan the whole way there.

But what brings this on?  Is it the fact that we are reaching middle age or just that or bodies change as we get older and we don’t know how to handle it?  I remember asking my great grandmother once if she felt different or when she looked in the mirror did she still see the same young woman she use to be (she was like in her 80’s when I asked).  And her response was that inside she still felt like she could run with the little kids and jump fences like in her youth or take the stairs two at a time but when she tried to get up and do all those things that was when her body reminded her that she couldn’t.  Maybe that is what the change is.  That in our minds we are still as young as that kid running around the playground broken leg or not but our bodies are telling us that we aren’t and instead of just accepting that we are older we decide that something has to be wrong.   

So next time you get a small headache, or backache or just a little runny nose maybe you can take it as it comes and not run out and tell everyone you have the bird flu.  And if it that doesn’t work  there is a doctor available all you need to do is call.

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