That Darned Arm!

There are many challenges we face as we age. However, there aren't many more daunting than coming to terms with your own body failing you. As we start to age, we may face ONE thing at a time that starts to fail; we may need reading glasses, we may get tired more quickly, our endurance starts to fade, our skin begins to sag. Luckily, we have time to adjust to each of these. But there comes a day of reckoning. One in which all of these individual failings catch up with us. This is aging.

It's tough to imagine this day of reckoning coming. It's even tougher to watch this day of reckoning occur and not be able to do a thing about it.

Mom's arm is getting worse. The arthritis in her arm is bad. Mom is now willing to take a Tylenol (or a generic substitute!) to lessen the pain. She is using heat to help her arm feel better. She is using that Ortho-Nesic cream to get some relief. Still, the arm is failing.

Mom is losing strength in that arm. She finds it hard to hold her purse with that hand. She can't move her arm around to buckle the seat belt into place. She is only wearing blouses that button in the front. And now this - she is having difficulty using that arm to pull things up. Like her socks. Like her pants. This is not good.

The best analogy I can think of is to compare the loss of strength and function of her arm to the loss of function you have when you break your arm. The arm won't bend in certain ways. You're in constant pain. The hand and arm are not functioning together to perform tasks. You just can't do what you used to do. The bad news is that unlike a broken bone which has the ability to heal, Mom's arm failure is more permanent. I don't think she's getting this function back. Bummer.