In this second post on “the body” I’ll turn, as I did in the previous one on “mind,” to some of my personal experiences of trying to know my own body. But unlike the previous one, I’ll try to give you a sense of how my own body-consciousness—sometimes of body-part, sometimes of body-care—emerged, by my age and the general date in time that it occurred.

• My first awareness of a particular part of my body happened near the end of grade school, when I would have been 11-12 years of age in 1947-48. It came when I realized in the classroom that I was unable to see clearly what the teacher had written on the blackboard. Thus, it was my flawed Sight that first caught my attention. I will never forget walking out of the optometrist’s office wearing my first pair of glasses and the sense of wonder that came over me when I realized that I could actually see the leaves on the trees rather than the “green blur” that had been my experience as long as I could remember!  For the rest of my life, periodic changes of prescriptions have been necessary in order to keep up with increasing nearsightedness and the slow development of cataracts.

• It was around the age of 15, in 1951-52, that I became aware of the value of Exercise. It was primarily involvement is sports that was the occasion for this consciousness—I was a sprinter, 50 and 100 yard dashes, on the track team during my first year of high school, but my interest, along with my confidence in my competitiveness, waned and I dropped off the team at the end of the year. However, interest in sports, at the neighborhood level, continued with “pickup” basketball and football games. So exercise continued to be a part of my life, but exercise-for-exercise-sake took a while to catch on—more on that later.

• At this point, my body-awareness—at least as I recall—enters a 20-year hiatus, during the 1950s-70s.  I have little memory of serious body-consciousness, other than sexuality and dealing with stress.
  • Like virtually every other young male, puberty, with the advent of adolescence, brings all kinds of changes to the body, with sexuality and introduction to the joys of masturbation being among them, and, eventually, actual sexual interaction with the opposite sex. My adolescence and early adulthood, through high school and college, was “peppered” with such experiences that were often as much, or even more, emotional than physical.
  • It was also near the mid-point of this two-decade period that I met and married, at age 23 in 1959, the woman who became my first wife, although, of course, it never occurred to me then that this marriage would end. Which brings me to my awareness of the effects of Stress on my life. It was a three-fold experience. The marriage took place at the end of my first year of seminary which brought to a higher level the stress of the increased pressures and expectations of graduate studies, along with figuring out the first year of married life, as well as handling my first part-time position as a “freshman pastor” leading a mission church. Within this same period, I was called to my first full-time pastorate, while continuing seminary studies into a doctoral program, moving to the church parsonage, and our adoption of our infant daughter, our first child, in 1965, and our second and third adopted children—a son in ’69, daughter is ’71. There were, of course, occasions for joy, satisfaction in achievements, etc., but difficulties in the marriage relationship itself had begun early and continued with increased intensity into the late ‘70s. I won’t, at this point, get into further detail, but if you haven’t seen in that scenario a place for high levels of stress, I would question whether you’ve been paying attention!

• From my mid-30s to early 40s (1970s), was a time of consciousness of a number of body-related issues, not so much with parts of my body—which would come later—but with matters of body-care.
  • For all of my early life, I was exceedingly thin—used to joke that “I had to stand in the same place twice to make a shadow” and I remember drinking chocolate milkshakes to try to gain weight!—and continued to be so until my marriage, when I soon put on 20-25 pounds. It filled me out but not enough to be overweight.  I’ve never been sure how it happened—neither my wife nor I were great cooks—but I assume it was just the result of settling into a life of different routines.  But by my mid-30s, I became weight-conscious and began what would become the familiar lifelong “seesaw cycles” of Weight gain/weight loss, with the accompanying consciousness of  Diet and nutrition – counting calories, carbs, fiber, and sodium; concentrating on vegetables & fruit; years of experimentation with a variety of diets—all of which continues to the present.
  • This was also the period when Exercise became important and self-conscious. It was centered primarily in sports:tennis, and racquetball on a regular basis, golf from time to time, and even the occasional lunchtime “pickup” basketball games with other faculty members. All, except the basketball, continued until I was 80 and a physical trauma, described below, compromised my balance and lower body strength. While I enjoyed and profited from the exercise, it was the “games” that drew me! The body benefit rose to equal importance later, when physical issues led me into Physical Therapy and, now, to the exercise equipment available at “the Y.”
  • Participation in the sports discussed above, as well as PT and the Y, drew me to consciousness of the importance of Hydration, which continues to the present.

• By the time I reached my mid-to-late 40s (early 1980s), my physician drew my awareness to the fact that my Blood pressure was marginally high,and thus began a lifelong consciousness of this bodily function. I was started on  medication for hypertension, dosage of which has increased over the years, has successfully controlled this issue, and continues to the present. The Stress levels in my marriage led to separation from my wife and children at the beginning of summer in 1981, when I was 45 years of age.

• While I’m not sure of the exact time,I first saw Dr. Ralph Loomis at some point in my late 40s-early 50s (1980s), due to some pain and “crackling” in my neck. After examining my X-rays, he gave me a best “clinical” diagnosis I’d ever had. He said, “Your neck’s a mess!” At that time it was primarily bone spurs, but Dr. Loomis—who remained my Neurosurgeon for over 30 years, until his recent retirement—did not then, or ever, recommend surgery, a conservative approach I’ve always appreciated!  A Cervical Spine issue will emerge later.

• During my late 60s-early 70s (mid-to-late 2000s) I began to experience pain in my lower back, initially on the right side. After a set of MRIs ordered by Dr. Loomis, which he showed and explained to me very carefully, it was clear that stenosis, a narrowing of the lumbar spine was pinching the nerves emanating from the spine at L-4 to L-6, something not uncommon in the aging process. Once again he, gratefully, did not recommend surgery, but prescribed both PT and an epidural injection, both of which have continued to be a part of my life into my 80s.

• It was in my mid-70s (early-2010s)  that I became consciousness of my hearing loss. As I recall, it happened while watching television and realizing that while I was “hearing,” I was not “discriminating” many of the words that were being spoken. Cathy, whose musical background had taught her much about acoustics, helped me understand that it was because I was hearing the vowels, but missing the consonants, which have a higher frequency than vowels. After an appointment and a hearing test with an audiologist, I received my first hearing aids, which have been replaced over the years with devices made more effective by advances in technology. It was also in this period that, based on results of routine lab work, Vitamins were first prescribed by my primary care physician, and which I continue to take.

• During my late 70s, but especially as I entered my 80s (mid-to-late 2010s), I became sharply aware of a number of things about my body which, in retrospect, I wish had come to my attention much earlier!  Most of this cognizance came to me from Physical Therapists, whom I have come to admire and for whom I have the deepest respect! The “life event” that led to my being referred to Physical Therapy (PT), happened in 2016, just before I turned 80.  It began one day with the sudden onset of severe neck pain, which lasted excruciatingly for several hours and then stopped almost as suddenly as it had begun. I’ve never quite understood the suddenness of both the beginning and end of this episode,  but I did learn later from my neurosurgeon (the “your neck’s a mess” guy) that the cause was Myelomalacia, or Myelitis, of the cervical spinal cord, which in layman’s terms means the spinal cord becoming “spongy,” in my case between C-2 and C-4. Since one of the effects is considerable numbness in the lower extremities—i.e. hips and legs—which causes some muscle weakness and effects balance, one may now understand why I was referred to PT any number of times, in order to work on “Core” strength, muscle strength and flexibility, and balance. While PT has always been helpful, and I still do some exercises at home that I learned there, these issues remain a part of my life as I approach my mid-80s and have, not surprisingly, worsened some in spite of efforts to contain them.

• Also, just as I turned 80 in 2016, my left knee—which had required arthroscopic surgery a few years earlier—had to be replaced. The surgery was quite successful and I received excellent home care in developing an exercise routine, but the result of the surgery was that, after sleeping mostly on my left side for many years, I had to learn to sleep on my back, which continues to be true to the present! This, and the necessity for arthroscopic surgery on my right knee, has understandably made me highly conscious of my knees and their importance to my mobility.

• Finally, we come to essentially the present, my early-to-mid-80s (2019-2021): At Age 83, I experienced two medical emergencies that brought two parts of my body into clear and sharp focus – my heart and my gall bladder.
  • I had a heart attack on February 19. 2019, the result of a blockage in my left anterior descending artery, also known as “the Widowmaker.” Because the cardiac event was mild, caught early, and a stent was placed in the artery immediately, what was initially possibly life-threatening did not turn out to be so. While I have gratefully had no further issues with my heart, I stay aware of the fact that, as my cardiologist reminds me, I have cardiac disease and must also stay conscious of its dietary and exercise implications.
  • In late September 2019, I had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance due to a severe gall bladder attack. While surgery was immediately called for, it had to be delayed for almost a week because of the risk of hemorrhage due to my taking Plavix, a blood thinner, prescribed after the heart attack. The eventual surgery, which was planned as a Laparoscopic procedure, turned out to be unexpectedly complicated, requiring extensive incisions, because the gall bladder was so severely infected and “intergrown” around a major blood vessel—I was later told that four surgeons were in the operating room at one point.  I was hospitalized for an additional week and in rehab for one more week. This experience brought immediate and long-term awareness of the functions of major bodily organs and, again, the importance of dietary awareness.
  • While both of these events were life-threatening, I was not conscious of it at the time. Later, however, I have become sharply mindful of having “looked death in the eye” and internalized the consciousness of my own mortality.

• Finally—really!!—my consciousness of mind and brain came pretty late in my life. That said, it is obvious and clear to me that the mind  is a function of the brain, but, at the same time, I am open to the possibility that mind may be “more” than that and also in some respects separate from the brain. So, in terms of the previous blog on the subject, I tend to do a “balancing act” between monism and dualism on this issue.  For further commentary on the subject, I refer you to that previous blog rather than even trying to summarize it all here.  I will say that, if I had to say only one thing about the mind, it would be this brief quotation from that blog:

“The mind’s effort to understand is central to the very nature and existence of humanity. We do it because we can’t help it, because the enterprise of understanding, ancient as humanity itself, is what has carried us from somewhere in the slime to the lofty but precarious perch where we now rest.”

And with that, I will close this already overly long post. Looking ahead, note these two reminders:

• The next topic, which might be dealt with in a single post, is “Know your (primary) emotional and personality type(s).”
• At the beginning of the next post, look for a major announcement regarding this blog site.

I hope you’ll stay with me!