Tag: aging
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The anorexia of aging
Alexandra MignucciAlbany, New York, United States While working at a medical home for patients with Alzheimer’s, I became fascinated by the difference in how much food the patients would eat when sitting at the table as a group versus when I would feed them in their rooms or on the couch. There was no difference…
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The loneliness of the long-living doctor
Peter Arnold Sydney, Australia Study of the head of an old man. Peter Paul Rubens. between 1610 and 1615. Kunsthistorisches Museum. Via Wikimedia. A noticeable phenomenon of the twenty-first century is the increasing frequency of friendships between older men. The importance of such friendships to both mental and physical health has been well documented.1,2,3…
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No complaints, only symptoms
Peter Arnold Sydney, Australia “No complaints, only symptoms,” I told my cardiologist this year. How dare I complain? I am eighty-four. Thirty-two years have passed since my quintuple coronary artery bypass; eighteen years since a diagnosis, in one of eleven biopsy samples, of invasive prostate cancer—left untreated, because so few of us die from it; five…
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Gulliver at Luggnagg — Learning about the immortal struldbrugs (abridged)
Image from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. (Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver). Illustration by Stephen Baghot de la Bere, 1904. Originally published in 1726. Bridgeman Images. Public domain. The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people . . . they show themselves courteous to strangers. One day . .…
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Rehearsing lines
Catalina Florina Florescu Hoboken, New Jersey, United States Coffee Queen. Iulia Şchiopu. Permission granted by artist. CHARACTERS: Eve Ana TIME AND SETTING: Now, here. Two women are seated on a bench. That’s all you need to know. Plus that their name is a palindrome. Mirrored names. Make what you want out of this. …
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The African Savannah
Steve Ablon Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts Photo by Steve Ablon Forty years ago, my father wore his safari hat, squinted through binoculars, told us those giraffes, the dark ones, are older, and soon will not be able to outrun lions or will break a leg, be eaten. That is the cycle of life he…
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Me, my father, and the angels
Hope Atlas Livingston, New Jersey, United States I’m Home by Jeniffer Guilherme. November 2019. Published with artist’s permission. The handle of the dresser drawer talks to my father while he sits in bed Whenever he likes he can conjure up the face of the dresser drawer with its pointy ears, droopy mouth and metal…
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The last picture show
Katherine White Rockville, Maryland, United States Highway 567, junction, near Taos, Taos, New Mexico. Photo by John Margolies. 2003. Public domain through Library of Congress. It was a cold December morning, the second day of the 2018 Hot Topics in Neonatology Conference in Washington, DC. Around 800 people trickled into the vast hotel ballroom,…