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Tuesday, March 29, 2005

After numerous medical tests, serious consideration...and other related research, it has come to my attention that: I AM AGING!

If it weren't so serious, I would have to laugh. I mean, think about it: Did people 75 years ago need a lot of "medical tests" to tell them they were getting OLDER? Why no...no they didn't.

Today I had a bone density test; and surprise,suprise, sure enough it showed that I had "significant bone loss." When I asked if this was related to my back pain, the tech said, "No, although you might be have arthritis." Yes, my paternal grandmother had terrible arthritis, but she also lived to be 92! I wonder if she'd had a bone density test in her 50s if it would have shown she had "significant bone loss?"

Today the tech gave me some calcium supliment (though I'd been taking similar ones for a couple years) and also a booklet about Fosamax. Yeah, the annoying and constant commercials for Fosamax -- one and the same. I have a sneaking suspicion that ALL women over 50 get this same advice when they have a bone density test: take supliments and also Fosamax.

Color me paranoid, but could it be , perchance, that the drug industry has come up with a way to get money out of all of us baby-boomers...drugs designed to stop the aging process? When in fact there is NO certainty to that and never has been.

I had been following ALL the advice for menopausal women: eating right, exercising (biking) daily, not overweight. In the booklet it has a list of "risk factors" for bone loss:

1. Personal history of fracture as an adult.

2. History of frgility fracture in a first-degree relative

3. Low body weight (less than 127 lbs) {So this means, I guess, we should be fat?}

4. Current smoking

5. Use of corticosteriod therapy for more than 3 months

6. Imparied vision

7. Estrogen deficiency at an early age (younger than 45 years)

8. Dementia

9. Poor health or fraility

10. Recent falls

11.Low calcium intake (lifelong)

12 Low physical activity

Now, I ask you (observant reader) doesn't this list pretty much encompass ALL women who are aging? Could it be that the pharmaceutical companies have hit on the way to make big bucks?

It's somewhat depressing to get older; I should know, because IT IS HAPPENING TO ME. But I have to wonder if "drugs" are the answer to stopping and/or reversing aging? I mean, hasn't mankind been searching for that proverbial "fountain of youth" from time immemorial?

What I am beginning to realize and accept is that WE ALL AGE. Nothing, absolutely NOTHING has thus far been found to STOP the physical/biological effects of aging. Hence, if you try to cheat death by drugs, plastic surgery or whatever means, you are a fool. Humans die, it happens every single day. There is NO magical pill, no magical cure for basically what we all Know (even if subconsciously): we are going to die, it is all a matter of time. No doubt there ARE a few drugs that genuinely help people live longer -- but the jury is still out on that, because there's not been that many studies done on the end-result of many newer drugs. We all realize that side effects can be devastating too.

So this rant is simply the result of what I have accepted: No drug, no medical test is going to dodge the bullet of death. Each person must decide whether the benefit of a drug is worth the side effect.

I still haven't had a call from my doctor to discuss the results of my MRI either.

Looks like I'm in for a lot of suffering before my physical decay provides death. Unless, of course, I decide to evade it by self-anniliation.

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