I knew I could do better than that. With three months of training, I could wipe out the Senior N.Y. State Empire Games record for the 100-yard dash.
During my working years I could be seen daily jogging five miles on a nearby high school track. It paid dividends after I retired.
“Life is like a dream,” my mother would say. ”It comes, we play our role, and then the curtain closes.”
When I reached 81 years of age, I was exceptionally fit, and still playing a role.
A few weeks after my birthday, my wife and I visited our son who lived near Glen Rock High School in New Jersey. Before lunch I called to my son,
“Marc, let’s go to the high school track so that you could time me for the 100-yard dash.”
On the short ride to the track I pictured all the old farts huffing and puffing behind me as I crossed the finish line.
“Sixteen seconds for 100 yards? My mother, when she was forty, could do that wearing her flannel slippers.”
With Marc at the end of track, I approached the start marker. The distance seemed longer than I had imagined.
Should I stretch before I run? Why bother? This is a walk in the park. I was poised, waiting for Marc to drop his arm as a signal to start. Down it went and I took off. The first step had me doubled over in agony. A sprain in my left calf muscle had me clutching my leg. With an arm resting on Marc’s shoulder, I hopped back to the car knowing that it would take a few weeks to recover. Of course I received no sympathy from my wife who felt that swimming was the best form of vigorous exercise.
After two weeks, I went back to the fitness center. Upon completion of sit-ups, push-ups and weights, I rushed to the recumbent bicycle to reoxygenate my cells.
Ah! The bicycle began as a downhill ride. But what is this? It was as if a delicate woman placed a finger on my front, upper left rib area. The bicycle’s resistance was set at the usual 12. I wasn’t working any harder to pedal the wheel. Should I stop, and then return in two days? That region over my heart was not an area to let pass. Two days later, the sit-ups, push-ups and weights were exhausting as usual. I wobbled to the bicycle, but this time I lowered the resistance to 8. After five minutes that finger on my chest reappeared. Is this a warning? This never happened before. As Pearl Bailey would say,
“One more time!”
In two days, I lowered the resistance to 6, and that gentle press soon touched me.
Without any idea of why this was happening, I made an appointment to see my cardiologist. She gave me a cardiogram, an echocardiogram, and then arranged for an angiogram at Mount Sinai Hospital for the following day.
Dr. Kim pointed to a tangled web of blood vessels on my angiogram. A quadruple bypass temporarily placed me on the substitute’s bench. Three months of rehab went well, but I was “the old guy” at my fitness center. I groaned with the sit-ups and moaned with the weight lifts. The bicycle again was my refuge.
As the days passed, I was overwhelmed by fatigue and exhaustion. Is this the price one pays for grinding out 81 years?
With a maze of wires pasted onto my chest was connected to an echocardiogram. Dr. Nguyen said that the reading indicated I had lost 10 percent of my heart’s pumping ability. As the days passed, I wondered whether sorting my pills into a plastic dispenser was worth the hassle. Should I throw the pills into the garbage and see what hand I would be dealt? But, I had a loving wife, two children and four grandchildren. I know they will miss me. Where’s my water bottle? The pills won’t go down without water. I will go back to the gym.
Is there a Cardiac Senior Olympics?
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