all too often health issues begin to interfere with the ordinary patterns of living.
Simply put, for many of us parts of our bodies wear out. Sometimes that is because of how we lived in the past: vigorous participation in some sports can lead to a variety of ailments, worn out joints and torn muscles that do not fully heal, too many concussions can have a connection with dementia.
I am 70. I played soccer fairly seriously even into my adulthood, including suffering one severe concussion — as it happens the first time my then girl friend and now wife had ever seen me play. I wound up in a hospital emergency room.
Over the years I have had some surgeries, albeit nothing of great risk. I have had several visits to emergency rooms, most of which have been for severe allergic reactions, albeit without the most severe reactions.
In recent years I have had to go on medication for hypertension and cholesterol, partially because of heredity, more so because I how I have eaten and lived over the 7 decades of my life.
There was one episode in March of 2014 where I was transported to a hospital because the school nurse thought I was having a stroke. After 27 hours in the hospital, and every kind of test under the sun, we pretty much were able to rule out even TIAs (mini-strokes), and determined that I was probably having ocular migraines, which seem over the years since to be most directly correlated with being somewhat dehydrated.
But now we have entered a new phase.