Starting Monday, I will be spending two afternoons a week learning the ins-and-outs (literally) of a complete physical exam. Like, the kind that doctors do, including ALL aspects of the human body… you see what I’m saying. Yes, I’ll sometimes be touching their (ancient) privates. No, I don’t think that’s normal for a future-dentist. Yes, I think it’s immature to focus on that single component of an otherwise tremendously important skill-set for all healthcare professionals. Whatever.
To spice things up even further, this educational experience will happen at a posh local senior living facility - where the average entering age is around 90, and the average stay is 4 years… you see what I’m saying. Super incredibly weird location for learning how to … touch people in a medically investigative kind of way.
This invasion-of-privacy for these generous elders will be even MORE strange for me, not having a single grandparent who lived past age 63. In fact, the average age at death for ALL FOUR of my grandparents is about 55. GUESS WHEN THAT WAS THE AVERAGE U.S. LIFE EXPECTANCY? Here’s a hint: there were only 46 stars on the U.S. flag. Charming.
Our people die young! Sadly strangely inexplicably prematurely, and I think that spending this much time around very old people will draw out some unresolved issues for me that I’ve really not had to face before. For example, guess how old my parents are? Yep - right around that magic number for THEIR parents. Guess how old I am? Yep -right around the very depressing average where my parents were basically orphaned.
My future geriatric friends are SO blessed - not just because I’LL be all up on them soon - but because they’ve spent SO much more time on this planet than both the global-average and Collins-average.
I can’t speak for my sisters (at least I shouldn’t), but parental mortality is obviously among the most sad things I could possibly bring up - BUT the up side of this is that I think I value the presence of my parents in my life to a higher degree that I would if I wasn’t frightened by their vulnerability on this planet. Another up-side if that if/when I make it past 55, I will be the most empowered pre-old-lady EVER.
