This is a different world from 20 years ago, where more and more seniors are vigorous and living longer and — in one case, a senior’s own work has helped him live longer himself and become a milestone:
In late afternoon last Dec. 31, Dr. Michael E. DeBakey, then 97, was alone at home in Houston in his study preparing a lecture when a sharp pain ripped through his upper chest and between his shoulder blades, then moved into his neck.
Dr. DeBakey, one of the most influential heart surgeons in history, assumed his heart would stop in a few seconds.
“It never occurred to me to call 911 or my physician,� Dr. DeBakey said, adding: “As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You’re thinking, What could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you’re perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain.�
But when his heart kept beating, Dr. DeBakey suspected that he was not having a heart attack. As he sat alone, he decided that a ballooning had probably weakened the aorta, the main artery leading from the heart, and that the inner lining of the artery had torn, known as a dissecting aortic aneurysm.
Years ago, a 90-ish senior citizen might be almost written off as too old for the surgery. But this time:
No one in the world was more qualified to make that diagnosis than Dr. DeBakey because, as a younger man, he devised the operation to repair such torn aortas, a condition virtually always fatal. The operation has been performed at least 10,000 times around the world and is among the most demanding for surgeons and patients.
Over the past 60 years, Dr. DeBakey has changed the way heart surgery is performed. He was one of the first to perform coronary bypass operations. He trained generations of surgeons at the Baylor College of Medicine; operated on more than 60,000 patients; and in 1996 was summoned to Moscow by Boris Yeltsin, then the president of Russia, to aid in his quintuple heart bypass operation.
Now Dr. DeBakey is making history in a different way — as a patient. He was released from Methodist Hospital in Houston in September and is back at work. At 98, he is the oldest survivor of his own operation, proving that a healthy man of his age could endure it.
“He’s probably right out there at the cutting edge of a whole generation of people in their 90s who are going to survive� after such medical ordeals, one of his doctors, Dr. James L. Pool, said.
None of this means the Golden Years are really Golden. My mother (in her 80s) has often said “The Golden Years are not for sissies” and someone else once said “The Golden Years suck.” In the case of my parents, my father has been dealing with some serious health issues for some time and they’re getting worse. But as a World War II veteran he copes with them the best he can and has an attitude that needs to be emulated by others.
He and my mother are living longer, healthier and more vigorous lives than their parents did. In a sense, the 65 year definition of a senior citizen is a bit outmoded these days. Due to an increased awareness of the importance of better nutrition, the perils of smoking, better medicine — and people like DeBakey who have revolutionized medical operations.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.