Robin Writes: The Checkup Challenge
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
By Robin Garrison Leach
Yearly doctor’s visit. I felt great. I just wanted refills.
I offered my arm for the blood pressure cuff, shoved my index finger inside the hinged oximeter, and confirmed my pill list. The nurse recorded it all.
Time to see the doctor…
Nope.
The nurse’s pulled out a numbered checklist as long as a CVS receipt. She had questions and requests that clipped my confidence and drained me of all pretense of vitality.
I could feel myself age with every word she pronounced.
Now, we who are old know we’re old. Our mirrors show us, our brain betrays us, and our mobility limits what we decide to accomplish each day. If we want to be reminded, we only have to try to hop.
So, when her questions began, I was at first amused and then confused.
Have you fallen…lately? Can you hear me snap my fingers by your ears? Does your bathroom have a walk-in shower? Are there stairs in your house? Do you use a cane or walker?
Can you remember these three words from your Dick, Jane, and Sally primer?
I almost wanted to look behind me for the person I imagined the nurse must be talking to. Did I seem out of it? Was brain matter leaking from my ears, dripping incoherence onto my “what I thought looked cool” flowered top?
The checklist finished, I knew what was next.
“Just flip over that paper. we’ll have you do a bit of drawing.”
She smiled and stared into my eyes.
“Just a standard test ‘once we reach a certain age,’’’ she said.
“I would like you to draw a clock, and make it point to 10:50.”
I grabbed the pen, clamped it between my crooked fingers, and drew my clock with dark strokes and darker impatience.
Finally, I had assured the nurse that I lived in a safe environment, enjoyed an adequate social life, could retain words, and still knew how to draw circles and arrows. She smiled, stood, and said the doctor would be in soon.
By the time her back disappeared behind the easy-close door, I felt as if I’d aged 30 years.
I appreciate the care and concern of my health providers. I trust them to respond to any changes I feel or show and keep my best interests at heart.
But I think aging is different now. Many people 70 and older are healthier that those in their 50s a generation ago, and most of us are still vibrant, steady, still-viable adults.
The questions that have probably been asked since my grandmother was alive feel impracticable and not tailored to the new standards of health.
I wondered why the checklist hasn’t been adjusted to reflect the individuality of each older adult.
You wanna ask some pertinent questions that will determine our abilities? Add a little humor to the process? Consider these:
ν When you lose your car in the parking lot, do you eventually find it?
ν When your artificial knee/hip clicks, do you smile because it didn’t hurt?
ν Can you attach a name to each of your grandchildren? They don’t have to be the right ones…just a name in the family tree.
ν Do you know the pills you take each day by shape and color?
ν Are you able to keep the cursing and sighing and growling to a minimum when others dismiss, ignore, and patronize you for being old?
Now, I know there are valid reasons to monitor older people’s cognition, and someday, my answers to the standard questions may begin to tell a different story. But maybe it’s time to see seniors in a more progressive light.
I left the office, strode confidently toward the parking lot, and began my own test of trying find my car in record time.
–––––––––––––
ν Robin is a freelance columnist who lives and writes in Quincy, Illinois. Contact her at [email protected].
