May 13, 2010

Middle Age.....The Saggy Truth ©

Everyone knows that middle age is when everything begins to sag. I'll never forget the day I discovered that I had grown bat wings; I pointed to something across the room, and all of a sudden the flesh under my upper arms began wobbling, and didn't stop jiggling for five minutes. I almost felt sick at the realisation that even my arms were beginning to betray me.




While I am slowly coming to terms with the chin line and other bits sagging, I'm strangely comforted by the knowledge that should my bottom cheeks start heading south, it will be everybody else that has to put up with looking at my bottom and not me. If the world wants to declare my saggy rear end a disaster area, I can simply choose to pretend that it's not really happening, because I don't have to look at it. The only time I'll need to bother about it is if my bottom cheeks get in the way any time I kneel down on the floor.

What few people understand is that if external things of the body can begin to sag, so can things internally in your body, including your throat. By the time I was in my early 40s my epiglottis and other throat bits were sagging, dragging and generally hanging about much more than they are supposed to. Consequently I developed a really top class case of sleep apnoea. This is the condition where one's throat closes up and one stops breathing in ones sleep. 

I've never been one to do anything half-heartedly and had developed such an extreme case of sleep apnoea that my doctor said, if it was any more severe, I'd be dead. I could have responded with something like “Naturally I didn't want to waste your time with a trivial case Doctor, so I thought I'd go all out! But hey, thanks for your encouraging and uplifting words there. And please feel free to tell me about any other life-threatening illness I might have.”

Later she was the same doctor who kindly advised me that I had developed diabetes. 

I am a single woman and should I ever consider marrying, I am at some point going to have to tell my potential partner that at night he's going to have to go to sleep with someone dressed like they're about to go on an undersea adventure, when I sport my c-pap machine mask. This particular machine helps me to breath in my sleep. There's also the fact that my c-pap mask dislodges during my sleep, and makes a sound somewhat like an elephant breaking wind. In addition, I also wear a mouth splint to keep my airway open that I refuse to believe makes me look like "Jaws" from the James Bond movies.

Yep, all in all, some lucky guy is going to get one heck of a sexy woman.  ©

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