BODY OF EVIDENCE

In a little under a month I'll be celebrating my 63rd birthday, which pretty much puts me squarely in the "old" category. Not old enough to retire, but that eventuality is within sight.

Over the last few years I've been posting about my aging, physicality, and sexuality, and how each of them impacts the others. It's been a journey, along which I seem to have touched at least a handful of people along the way. According to the blog stats my little essays have received more than 110,000 hits. Whether that means a hundred thousand people have read each and every one of the essays is debatable, as I'm sure there are more than a few who come for the pictures.

"I see. And how long have you felt like this?"

But for me it's been rewarding because, as I've noted a few times, this has proven to be good therapy for me. And it costs a heckuva lot less than paying an analyst for help. (Though I'll grant you, I probably would've gotten a lot more useful feedback from an analyst.)

But the title of this entry is "Body of Evidence."

For each of us, our bodies are a reflection of our lives. 

Athletes may suffer from previous injuries in their sports career. My best buddy is in every way an athlete. He also suffers from a bad lower back, a sore neck from a biking accident many years ago, and various other ailments related to his "physical fitness."

In my own case, my body bears the scars of time in a number of ways. The physical scars from my generous helpings of surgical intrusion over the years are the most obvious examples. One of the surgeries, the kidney operation when I was four or five, has had an ongoing impact on my life probably unexpected by my parents and the original doctors.

The scar itself cuts across my left side abdomen. It's quite long, and is pretty rough by modern surgical standards. This was done in the 1960s, when cosmetics and surgical closures weren't nearly as developed. It's a beast at (now) eight inches slicing across my back and side. (A cut of only three inches on a five year old is substantially bigger by adulthood.)

Over the years I've had a little bit of pain from it, primarily related to it getting bumped and rubbed by chairs. But the main effect has been psychological. I was routinely embarrassed by it, though that makes no sense to me as an adult. As a kid, however, it was the subject of questions and, I thought, something that made me ugly. It wasn't until I began swimming competitively that I learned to ignore it. Not a lot can be hidden by a Speedo (though, more about that in a minute).

That scar led directly to others, as the surgery left internal scarring that later in life would also need to be dealt with surgically, though fortunately no physical cutting into my abdomen was required - the later procedures involved putting stents into the ureter (the tube between the kidney and the bladder) to break up some post-kidney scar tissue which was constricting the flow of urine and damaging the kidney. The stents were put in place with me unconscious as the doctor went up through my penis to insert the tube into the ureter, and vice versa - without the sedatives - for their removal. Had to be done twice, and extracted twice. I've discussed my discomfort at having them removed in the doctor's office while fully conscious.

I mentioned above about the Speedo not covering the kidney scar. Another aspect of my anatomy is that I had a couple of umbilical hernias which had to be repaired while I was young. These had the side effect of making my navel a rather prominent "outie." Once I started swimming I became rather self-conscious about it and began trying to pull the Speedo up over my belly button to hide it. You can imagine the look this created, and my mother managed to convince me that a scrunched up Speedo looked far more silly than my belly button did. This was long before I was aware of whatever the male equivalent of camel toe is, though obviously at the time I had little to scrunch up.

My legs also have scars telling the story of my life. They bear the brunt of decades of skinned knees, barked shins, and several large and energetic canine impacts. Both of my shins are criss-crossed with marks and scars that suggest that I'm not exactly the most gentle of walkers. My shins are also discolored as a result of the ill-advised years I took blood thinning medications. My shins are evidently permanent discolored as a result. (Very much like bruising as the blood apparently trickled out of the veins in my legs to discolor the nearby tissues.)

A little higher up, my arms and hands also bear testament to my life. I have a scar on my left hand where a large sign at work ripped a brutal gash when it fell from the ceiling. Fortunately it hit my hand and not my head. Also fortunately, I wasn't the employee who had incorrectly installed the sign.

Another mark on my arm recalls a burn from a science experiment in High School. Knowing how hot a piece of equipment gets after the Bunsen burner had been on for a while is a pretty good lesson to learn.

I think it goes without saying that for years I was pretty accident prone. My Mom used to remark that I was one of those kids who "led with my head." And as my hairline grows increasingly thin I'm certain we'll see the lingering marks of those days. I seemed that we were regularly going to the ER with one blow or another that required stitches in my skull. At some point you may be able to play tic-tac-toe across my follicly-challenged future head.

As with most people, other reminders of a life lived are internal. I have a slipped disc in my neck that causes me regular discomfort. 

I think I did this when I was fifteen or so. I went out to grab the mail after a rainstorm, and was running
back into the house across wet grass and slipped, going over backwards flat onto my back and severely wrenching my neck. It wasn't the sort of thing we took to the ER, so my guess is it never healed properly and as I've aged it's simply gotten worse. I regularly see a therapist who does what he can to alleviate the pain. The alternative is to have it operated on, so until the pain becomes severe we're going to leave it as is.

And then there are the litany of issues I've already recounted here on the blog. Those which I've had in and around my groin, which is quite probably the most misadventured part of my body. I've joked that it's probably payback for my handful of very fun years exploring the pleasures men can get from their dicks, that the universal constant requires balance, and so my dick (and balls) has also experienced a lot of discomfort. Again, just part of my history and life.

It's all there, if one cares to look closely. The scars and ailments related to being 63 years of age, and not necessarily the most cautious person when it comes to how I treated my body. All of my various medications, for blood sugar, blood pressure attest to my years of indulgence and gluttony. I was fat, and that gave me diabetes and high blood pressure. Getting healthier later in life is mitigating, but not solving, the problem. But I feel better and am much more confident, which is a pretty decent trade off

So, there it is. My Body of Evidence. My anatomy is a record of my life, good and bad, and tells my story pretty effectively.

And with evidence like mine, the conviction is pretty well assured.