Tag: Old age
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The loneliness of the long-living doctor
Peter Arnold Sydney, Australia 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 This issue has particular relevance to older male doctors, especially in the UK, where doctors tend to retire early.4 Many…
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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)
The Luggnaggians are a polite and generous people . . . they show themselves courteous to strangers. One day . . . I was asked by a person of quality, “whether I had seen any of their struldbrugs, or immortals?” . . . He told me “that sometimes, though very rarely, a child happened to…
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Rehearsing lines
Catalina Florina FlorescuHoboken, New Jersey, United States CHARACTERS: EveAna 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. EVE: What is the taste of water, dear? ANA: Excuse me? EVE:…
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A house call
Martin DukeMystic, Connecticut, United States Many years ago, in the mid 1980s, when I was still in clinical practice, I made a house call accompanied by a second year medical student who was coming to my office one day a week as part of her course in physical diagnosis. The patient I had been called…
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Life savings
Daniel MoranWebster, New Hampshire, United States Aging is the bankwhich accepts deposits,and will not evergive them back.But it does have itstiny catalogue ofcompensations. I recall thoseancient days whenopening that accountmight earn you a newtoaster or blender,a set of steak knives.This week, afterfinding out that thethe steamy apparition,which has taken upresidence near the foul polein the…
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Those golden years
Richard SobelKibbutz Revivim, Israel “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle, and I’m sitting on it.” Jeanne Clement was one hundred ten years old but cheerful and lucid when she made that remark during an interview. She may still have been smoking: she stopped only when her vision became too poor to see the cigarette well…