I don’t have an answer for this one yet, but I’m getting some ideas. Mostly my model for it is my last dog.

Shelby came into my life in 1991, when she was one and I was 41, and she continued for nearly another fifteen years. She was a retriever/shepherd/other mix – in other words a biggish dog – so she lived to what we call a great age. She suffered from chronic allergies to just about everything at sea level (she was meant to live in high desert I think, wearing nothing but a red bandanna). She was also the most athletic dog I ever knew. Absolutely born to move.

She had a simple approach to the degeneration of age. She tried to use every muscle in her body, every day. She’d rise from her floor pillow bed, stretch and test each limb, and then use what was working. She continued to try with the non-working parts too.

That dog had her ACL rebuilt when she was fourteen. I caught her the next day, trying to work it out on the stairs.

Now I try to mimic her attitude. I use what works. I keep testing parts.

But I’d be unfair if I didn’t describe the other approaches I see around me. I witness two types of extreme behavior, and I wonder.

Some of the people I love are fixers. They go for regular checkups and every recommended screening, they receive a doctor’s words as if issued from the burning bush, and they worry about their test numbers. When anything changes for the worse in their bodies, they embark on a crusade they describe as “getting to the bottom of this” and they expect a cure.

Others I observe are avoiders. They neglect to make appointments with doctors or dentists, even when they have alarming symptoms. I know ex-smokers with painful coughs who won’t get a chest X-ray, post-menopausal women who are leaking but not telling any M.D., individuals with loose or painful teeth who haven’t seen a dentist in ten years and aren’t about to now.

I guess the fixers are super-patients and the avoiders are non-patients. I looked up the word “patient” once. I remember reading it meant to bear suffering without complaint. I aim to continue to be a bad patient.