Sept. 05, 2006 - 20:38 MDT

PREACHIN' TO THE CHOIR

From my age it seems quite logical, this article by Tom Keyser of the Albany Times Union quoted in full here:

BOOMERS GET OWN 'DISEASE'

'Boomeritis' the price they pay for devotion to physical activity

ALBANY, N.Y. --"Tom Maney turned 50 in June, and so far, he has only one surgery scheduled."

"It's rotator-cuff surgery, and Maney, true to form, is making sure it won't interfere with his activities. He's scheduled it for November -- a week after he's scheduled to play in a baseball tournament in Arizona."

"Maney has played hockey and baseball since he was a boy. And he's played them with abandon, WITH LITLE REGARD FOR THEIR EFFECTS ON HIS AGING BODY. HE'S PAID THE PRICE."

"This will be his eighth surgery. He's had three on his knee and one on his back. He's had hernia surgery, plastic surgery on his mouth, and this will be the second operation on his shoulder"

"My doctor keeps telling me I'm 30 years on the wrong side of twenty," says Maney, of Albany, N.Y. "He says that's what's wrong with me." In a word, because there's a word for it now, Maney suffers from "boomeritis." It defines the vulnerabilities -- the wear and tear, the injuries -- the aging body as baby boomers strive to retain their youth by continuing to run, play sports and push themselves with an intensity better-suited to people half their age."

"Dr. NIcholas A. DiNubile, an orthopedic surgeon in Havertown, Pa. coined the term to describe "the tendinitis, bursitis, arthritis and, most important, the fix-me-itis" of this generation."

"Doreen Frank sees lots of people like Maney. She's a physical therapist who, with her husband Bob, owns Columbia Pysical Therapy in the Albany area."

"Compared with 10 years ago, we're getting many more of these boomers who don't want to slow down," she says. "The're very devoted to physical activity and just don't want to take a rest."

"The initial wave of 77 million baby boomers, Americans born from 1946 to 1964, is turning 60 this year. DiNubile began noticing several years ago while working out at the gym that people around his age, -- he's 54 -- started asking him about the aches and pains in their knees and their backs and their shoulders."

"In jest, I started calling it "boomeritis," DiNubile says. "But the more I thought about it, the more I thought there was something new conceptually, something that was going to be around for a long time."

"He also started seeing more patients in their 40s and 50s with sports-related injuries. Then he ran across a study by the Consumer Product Safety Commission that found a 33 percent increase from 1991 to 1998 in the number of adults from ages 34 to 54 who were treated in emergency rooms for sports-related injuries."

"That's going up all the time," DiNubile says. "It's being driven by an aging population, by the aging baby boomers. They're the first generation trying to stay active, in droves on aging frames. They're trying to turn back the clock." In the process they'e straining hamstrings, blowing out knees and and wrenching backs. "The answer isn't shutting down but slowing down," DiNubile says. "Warm up and stretch, adjust your exercise regimen or start one. But remain active by all means," he says."

"Maney has adjusted his gym routine until it's basically physical therapy. He used to pump iron. Now he works his heart on a treadmill or bicycle and his injured joints and muscles on weight machines."

"I joke at the gym that I've been in maintenance mode the past 20 years.

"I don't feel so much that I can't do the things anymore I used to do. It's just that now I know I''m going to pay the price for doing it."

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I guess it is because I injured my back when I was twelve (back in 1933) and spent a month in Moleskin adhesive tape from shoulders to behind. The doctor didn't deem that I needed X-rays and I'm not too sure what the state of that art was then or the state of the surgical art either. So, for years I lived my life with my back "going out" occasionally, sleeping on the floor 'til the heat was off the tender spots and then going about my normal business.

As I aged, those periods came more often and I began to limit what I did and tried to do.

I have an offspring and an in-law, those men are the people talked about in the article. Neither one would limit themselves as they grew older. One's knee is bone on bone and he is fighting replacement at age 62. The other is in intensive physical therapy trying to fight having surgery on his shoulder.

And some folks do not realize that "fix-me-itis has very definite limits. Surgeries can't rebuild what is gone.

I don't think either of my beloved relatives are "trying to remain young forever" but that is the way they lived and it seems, tried to continue living that way. Neither would listen to their fathers when they urged them to slow down a bit and limit excessive activity.

It is pretty obvious to us when a car or piece of machinery is suffering from old age and has to be handled gently, but we quirky humans don't want to bring ourselves to admitting that our precious bodies that have served us so well over the years are getting in a condition like that.

Many folks are going through the routine, the surgeries, physical therapies -- so perhaps this is just PREACHIN' TO THE CHOIR . . . . . . . .

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