Opus 2017-356: Headlines: Three Strikes and We Are Out, part 1 of 2

You may be young enough that you don’t care.  Getting old and dying are not on your radar yet.  Well and good.  But when I saw a link on Drudge to Bloomberg telling me that my demographic is in trouble I decided to check it out.  Three results were noted. 

I fit into the first, delayed retirement.  I did not leave the work force until I was almost 70.  Why wait so long?  Health insurance for my wife.  While the nation was living in Obamacare Limbo I had what we called a Cadillac plan.  We were well taken care of as long as I worked but when she got old enough for Medicare it was “Hasta la vista, baby”.

The second one I am still waiting to find out.  Will I die earlier?  My great grandfather lived to 67.  My father died at 74.  I figure, based on that pattern, to make it to 81.  According to the article I am supposed to make it to 87.6.  I will either be the first to know or the last depending on whether I die in my sleep or not.  Since it also said there was a rising incidence of dementia in my age group I am not sure that dying earlier is such a bad thing.  I am ready to go and ready to stay.

As for the third one, I am probably healthier than I was ten years ago.  The doctors tell me I have something called atrial fibrillation, or a-fib for short.  I get the impression it is fairly common and the big fear is people with a-fib tend to get blood clots in the heart which go to the brain and cause strokes.  So to keep my wife happy and give the doctor a purpose in life I am taking my pills.  He said I have the kind of a-fib which has not symptoms.  I guess that should make me happy but it just makes it hard to believe there is a problem.  I also have a pace-maker.  Having said that I do not suffer from any of the ADL limitations the authors said are plaguing my generation.  ADL is an acronym new to me meaning “activity of daily living”.  I can still spin my own spaghetti, put on my own sox and wipe my own bottom.  We sometimes forget what we have to be grateful for.

To be continued...

homo unius libri