Oxygen and Old Age

November 1, 2009 | Filed Under Humor, John Armor, Society/Culture |

-By John Armor

I hate defeat. No concessions. No quitting. No giving up before the goal is reached. Last week I made one of the greater concessions of my life. It was a concession to oxygen and old age.

All of us maintain a certain fiction, as long and as far as we can. Well, for Jack LaLanne, he’s still the same trim athletic guy he always was, and leading exercise groups at the age of 92. But for the rest of us, we are not the young, agile folks we once were.

Hair goes. Teeth go. Gravity takes hold of various body parts. Knees and other joints get stiff and uncooperative. We pretend it isn’t much. But all together, it’s a lot. It’s permanent. And, it’s all downhill.

But there is one symptom of deterioration I’ve always thought is an order of magnitude worse than all the others, combined. All of you have seen it. Some of you have experienced it. It is the plethora of take-along oxygen bottles that are appearing all across the greying face of America.

There is a good reason why oxygen in old age is a worse symptom of defeat than any other. All the others leave time for a cure. There are many months, nay years, to lose weight, change your habits, start exercising, and so forth, However, with breathing, you are never more than three minutes from death.

Now, that produces a sense of urgency.

Last week I went on oxygen. Well, first I got double pneumonia. Last time I got that a few years back, I visited my kindly doctor. He wrote a prescription for stiff antibiotics, and that knocked the pneumonia for a loop, pronto. Not this time, however. The magic pills didn’t work. So, I dragged myself to the hospital on the weekend and came away with a prescription for O2 bottles and stronger pills.

For those who have seen the various tubes and bottles but have no experience with oxygen supplies, here’s how it works: They bring you an “oxygen concentrator.” That’s a machine which uses osmosis to take ordinary air, throw away some of the nitrogen, and run the oxygen content of the output up to double or more the 17% it represents in normal air. Then there are the back-up and travel additions.

Since we live at the end of a half-mile gravel road on a mountain top in the Blue Ridge, power failures from our electrical co-op (which shall remain nameless to protect the guilty), are commonplace. So, there is also a large tank, like the ones that Charlie Allnut used to sink the Louisa in “African Queen,” which can put out a sixteen-hour non-electrical supply of oxygen. Then there are the baby bottles, a six-pack of small ones that carry a two-hour supply each.

The bad news is that we now have all of those devices in our home. The machine is connected to a 57-foot tube, so I can go most places in our compact house and remain tethered like a puppy on a retractable leash. The good news is that a steady dose of oxygen at night and while I am working on the computer are more than enough to do the trick. I’m not trapped to these devices, 24/7.

I’m sleeping like a rock. I wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. My energy level is way up. All my muscles are stronger than before. Even my dubious knees are happier now. I’m getting more exercise, and losing weight slowly but steadily. As they say in the detergent ads, everything is sunshine bright. If your doctor has a chat with you (or a family member) about oxygen therapy, don’t reject it out of hand. As they say, “try it, you’ll like it.” Well, maybe “like it” is the wrong phrase. But you will be amazed by the good results.

As much as I doubted it and denied it for years and years and years, I am now officially an old f*rt, and significant deterioration has set in. But as Bette Davis said, “Old age is no place for sissies.” And to paraphrase Maurice Chevalier, “Oxygen and old age are far preferable to the lack of both.”
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John Armor is a graduate of Yale, and Maryland Law School, and has 33 years practice at law in the US Supreme Court. Mr. Armor has authored seven books and over 750 articles. Armor happily lives on a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge. He can be reached at: John_Armor@aya.yale.edu

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