Falling Apart

The morning of my 30th birthday I woke up and I hurt. My elbow was throbbing, my knees were creaking and when I finally dragged myself out of bed, the bones in my feet were crackling. That was about a year and a half ago and it turned out to be just a coincidence. It was a relief to know that I didn't magically become an old duffer on the morning of my 30th birthday. My elbow was fine the next day.

Fast forward a year and a half and I have to reconsider. A little over a week ago my eyes had trouble focusing. I was seeing things double and it gave me such a headache I had to lay down. The double vision eventually went away but still a week later, my eyesight is not as sharp as I remember it being. Of course it might not be my eyes getting worse, but my memory getting worse. Maybe my eyes were always bad but in my senility, I've forgotten.

And a week before that, I was walking around the house barefoot and stubbed my pinkie toe on the coffee table. I didn't see it there...aha, a clue...my vision IS going bad. But I should have remembered that the table was there...so maybe it IS my memory that is going. *SIGH* Do you understand my predicament. I'm not sure what is going on, I feel so confused. Is that an early sign of Alzheimers?

I was just starting to feel back to normal again, getting back into my "youthful" groove, when I suffered another case of my body failing me. I was biting into a tasty taquito when I felt a click back in my jaw. I spit the bite out into my napkin and reached back into my mouth with a finger. I felt what I thought was a piece of tortilla chip stuck in my gums and scratched at it with a fingernail. Something shot out of my mouth and onto the floor.

Immediately I knew something was not right. My tongue, which for the last 20+ years has had an intimate relationship with my molars, caressing thier smooth enamel covering, was now greeted with a harsh jagged reality of a roughly cracked tooth. I was in disbelief, I was imagining I should be in lots of pain but oddly, there was none. Except for the roughness of the broken tooth against my tongue, I wouldn't have known anything was different. I was in denial until I got on my hands and knees and searched under the table and found the piece of tooth.

The lack of pain can probably be attributed to the fact that the tooth might have been dead already and was just hanging out for appearances sake. I wonder how many other body parts I have that are like that. My eyes, my memory, my teeth, my toenails...Oh yeah, I almost forgot: When I stubbed my pinkie toe, the toenail came clear off. Again, thankfully there wasn't a lot of pain, just another dead body part waiting to come jarred loose. I don't know what is more worrisome, the fact that there are parts falling off my body or the fact that I meant to mention the toenail incident three paragraphs ago and it completely left my mind.

Maybe its a merciful gift from my Creator that the mind is going along with the body. If I remembered more about what my body has gone through, I might be more stressed out about it. I guess ignorance really IS bliss.